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| Market Mapping in the Herbal Products Sector, Kenya, Practical Action 2005 |
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| Country(ies) | Kenya |
| Implementing agency(ies) | Kenya Gatsby Trust, Practical Action (ITDG), Traidcraft |
| Funding agency(ies) | Comic Relief, Ford Foundation |
| Date completed | April 2005 |
| Geographic setting(s) | Rural |
| Sub-sector(s) | Herbal Products |
| Issues/challenges | weak markets, pastoralists |
| Contact person(s) | Ms. Alison Griffith |
| Web site | http://www.practicalaction.org |
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Description
Pastoralists in Northern Kenya have been facing the long-term erosion of their traditional livelihoods as a result of declining livestock prices, environmental degradation and conflict. Practical Action has been working with pastoralist communities in Kenya for over 10 years and technology-led solutions were failing to improve livelihoods. The areas they inhabit contain potentially valuable natural resources, including herbal products showing increasing demand in export markets. In 2004 a project was initiated by Practical Action, Traidcraft and Kenya Gatsby Trust that aims to learn about approaches for successfully integrating marginalized producers into viable market chains.
The project team carried out preliminary research, which identified herbal products as a viable and growing sub-sector. Further research identified a product group, aloe, as important to the livelihoods of communities, and that there is growing demand on world markets. For the first phase the project focused on West Pokot, an area that characterises typical aspects of the product sector. The project approach is to:
- Enable producers (harvesters and boilers) in West Pokot to establish a ¿Market Opportunity Group¿
- Facilitate further market exploration to select the most promising market channels
- Conduct a Participatory Market Chain Analysis (PMCA) with market actors in the selected channels to identify and tackle bottlenecks and opportunities.
The paper below describes the process and results of the participatory "market mapping" exercise of the aloe subsector both to understand the sector and to test the "market mapping" methodology.
Methods for info gathering
key informant interviews, interviews with market players, secondary source research, market player workshops
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