Green Growth Acceleration: Digital Platforms and Soil Intelligence for Resilient Farming

Project Summary:

Smallholder farmers in Kenya face compounding pressures from climate change, low agricultural productivity, and inefficient resource use. A critical underlying gap is the lack of reliable, high-resolution soil intelligence — without which farmers resort to blanket application of fertilizers and pesticides, driving up costs and environmental degradation. While Kenya's national agricultural research body (KALRO) has begun developing digital soil fertility maps, these tools require further refinement, field validation, and a robust dissemination infrastructure to translate data into actionable guidance for farmers and policymakers.

This grant seeks to bridge these gaps by building a comprehensive digital soil intelligence ecosystem in Kenya. The project will enhance existing soil models, deploy climate-smart cultivation guidance, and develop ward-level digital decision-support dashboards accessible to both farmers and county-level policymakers.

It is organized around four activities:

• Soil Model Enhancement, Validation, and Capacity Building: This is focused on refining soil fertility and crop suitability models through field data collection and advanced calibration. It includes training for KALRO laboratory staff and analysts to ensure long-term institutional ownership of the tools.
• Climate-Smart Cultivation Targeting: Using enhanced soil intelligence, this activity will generate crop-specific recommendations, guide resilient seed selection, and provide precision input guidance to reduce overuse of agrochemicals and improve yields.
• Digital Decision-Support Systems and Scaling: This component will develop ward-level digital dashboards and ensure interoperability with existing national platforms, making soil and climate data accessible to farmers, extension workers, and policymakers in real time.
• Exchange Visit to South Korea: A knowledge-sharing study tour to Korean institutions — the Rural Development Administration (RDA) and Korea Rural Community Corporation (KRC) — to facilitate bilateral learning on advanced soil health management and smart farming technologies.

This grant is aligned as follows:

• Site specific fertilizer and crop recommendations are disseminated among key stakeholders of Kenya’s two on-going lending projects: FSRP (P177816) and NAVCDP (P176758). This work directly supports NAVCDP’s Component 1 (Building Producer Capacity for Climate-Resilient Stronger Value Chains) and FSRP’s Subcomponent 1.2 (Climate-Smart Agriculture Technologies and Services). Furthermore, our approach aligns with the Kenyan government’s strategic direction to develop DSM through KARLO.