C-LaSAIR: Climate-Smart Labor-Saving Agrotechnologies for Increased Resilience of Women in Dryland Kenya
Website: https://c-lasair.uoeld.ac.ke
C-LaSAIR, an initiative funded by the Gates Foundation (referred to as the foundation), is part of Grand Challenges for Accelerating Catalyzing Solutions for Climate Change’s Impact on Health, Agriculture, and Gender (https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/accelerating-catalyzing-solu…). The Grand Challenges family of initiatives seeks to source and seed innovations and accelerate the development of transformational solutions. C-LaSAIR seeks to collaboratively design and implement scalable, climate-smart, labor-saving agricultural practices and technologies to improve women’s livelihoods in drylands of three counties in Kenya namely Elgeyo-Marakwet, Kisumu and Turkana. These practices, depending on the county, will focus on beekeeping and production of poultry, fruit, sorghum, groundnuts, and cowpeas, as well as rice paddy fish farming where feasible. The approach will be co-designed by the intended beneficiaries. The set of technologies will include new mechanisms for water harvesting and automated solar-powered irrigation systems. Farming practices will be introduced to increase food and nutrition security as well as for higher and more stable income. The investment, with a funding grant of $199,993.00, will be implemented for a period of two years (September 2024 –August 2026). It is envisaged that the labor-saving water-harvesting techniques and the rice paddy fish farms, and poultry technologies will benefit 920 households (HH) in Elgeyo-Marakwet, 750 HH in Kisumu and 854 HH in Turkana by reducing distance to access clean water by 25% in the dryland zones of the counties in two years; The solar-based irrigation systems together with innovative circular agrosilvopastoral technologies and practices focusing on beekeeping, poultry, fruits tree production will increase food and nutrition security by 25% to a total of 2,524 HH across the three counties in two years.