SAGA Progress Report

SAGA
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SAGA Progress Report
April, 2004

II. RESEARCH
B. Kenya

Activities over the past six months

On Thursday, March 11, 2004, Kenya Public Policy Research Institute (KIPPRA) hosted a workshop on "Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Method of Poverty Analysis in Kenya," co-organized by Cornell, the Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) and the SAGA-Kenya project. The workshop was attended by 50 or so representatives from various government ministries, the Central Bureau of Statistics, donor agencies (e.g., USAID, World Bank, EU, DFID), Kenyan universities and research institutes, as well as several different national media outlets (print, radio, and TV). The opening keynote speaker was Dr. David Nalo, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Planning and National Development and former Director of the Central Bureau of Statistics. The workshop included presentations by a range of scholars from different social science disciplines and closed with an expert panel discussing how best to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods of poverty analysis in emerging policy-oriented research in Kenya. The event was widely regarded as highly informative and enjoyable. Conference details are available on this site; a copy of the program is attached as Appendix I.

The SAGA-Kenya team met the following day at KIPPRA to update one another on the status of the individual research projects under the SAGA umbrella. During the past six months, the four Kenyan collaborating institutions initiated and completed fieldwork on their primary research under the two sub-themes of SAGA-Kenya — "Reducing risk and vulnerability in rural Kenya" and "Empowering the rural poor" — with interrelated sub-projects by affiliated institutions and individual researchers. The different institutions are at different stages in data entry, cleaning, and analysis. But each reports the work to be progressing satisfactorily.

Five Cornell graduate students are working on topics related to the SAGA-Kenya research program. A Kenyan economics Ph.D. candidate, Andrew Mude, completed his dissertation field work in Muranga District, partially funded by a SAGA competitive small grant and partly by the Rockefeller Foundation. Mr. Mude was co-hosted by IPAR and Tegemeo during his field period in Kenya, where he focused on the determinants of successful cooperative marketing arrangements in the coffee, dairy, and tea sub-sectors, seeking to understand how meso-level institutional arrangements can most effectively empower small producers in liberalized marketing channels and reduce their exposure to risks of price crashes and contract breach or hold up.

Chris Barrett spent several days in the field with two other students in the midst of field data collection. David Amudavi, a lecturer at Egerton University currently pursuing a Cornell Ph.D. in Adult and Extension Education, is completing one year of field research on how different types of community groups affect household-level innovation and welfare, and how external (donor, government, and private sector) agencies can most effectively partner with community groups to improve their developmental effectiveness. Mr. Amudavi’s fieldwork has been supported primarily by the Rockefeller Foundation. Heidi Hogset, an American/Norwegian Ph.D. candidate in Applied Economics and Management, is completing a year’s fieldwork, funded by the National Science Foundation, Cornell, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, on the role social networks play in improving agricultural productivity and natural resources management in the central and western highlands. Both Mr. Amudavi and Ms. Hogset’s work is a part of the "Empowering the Rural Poor" sub-theme and will be featured in our policy conference.

Two other students have been doing preparatory work for field thesis research that will begin in summer 2004, and will be released, ultimately, under the umbrella of SAGA-Kenya research. Mr. Paulo Santos, a Portuguese Ph.D. candidate in Applied Economics and Management, has been doing background research and writing grants in support of fieldwork on social networks among pastoralists in northern Kenya and their role in choices regarding seasonal migration, interhousehold transfers, employment and educational finance to manage risk and vulnerability. Mr. Kioko Munyao, a Kenyan M.P.S. candidate in International Agriculture and Rural Development, will be working in the same northern Kenyan sites as Mr. Santos, studying how communities and households adapt to the loss of dry season grazing and watering areas to gazetting of protected areas for conservation purposes. The thrust of his work is to understand what sorts of interventions might prevent loss of crucial mobility for risk management and asset protection, with a special focus on the imminent imposition of land use restrictions on the Hurri Hills of Marsabit District.

The SAGA-Kenya team prepared eight new papers, presented initially at the March 2004 workshop on "Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Method of Poverty Analysis in Kenya." In addition, four working papers previously released under SAGA were accepted for publication after peer review. "Decomposing Producer Price Risk: A Policy Analysis Tool with An Application to Northern Kenyan Livestock Markets," by Barrett and Winnie Luseno, will appear in Food Policy. "Poverty Traps and Safety Nets," by Barrett and John McPeak, will appear in a forthcoming Kluwer volume edited by Alain de Janvry and Ravi Kanbur, entitled Poverty, Inequality and Development: Essays in Honor of Erik Thorbecke. "Rural Poverty Dynamics: Development Policy Implications," by Barrett, will appear in Agricultural Economics, and "Dynamic Poverty Traps and Rural Livelihoods," by Barrett and Brent Swallow, will appear in a forthcoming Routledge volume edited by Frank Ellis and Ade Freeman, entitled Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction Policies. Three other papers were initiated, one with Cheryl Doss and John McPeak on intrahousehold and intertemporal variation in risk perceptions in northern Kenya, one with Erin Lentz on food aid targeting, and one with Awudu Abdulai and John Hoddinott on the purported disincentive effects of food aid.

Planned Activities

KIPPRA and IPAR, under the leadership of Drs. John Omiti and Walter Odhiambo, are editing the papers from the March 2004 workshop on "Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Method of Poverty Analysis in Kenya" into a proceedings volume to be published in Nairobi later in 2004. They are slated to have the full draft proceedings assembled by June 1, 2004.

The SAGA-Kenya team will hold an internal, day-long workshop in August 2004, at which first draft research reports will be presented and discussed among the team with a select set of invited discussants. Authors will then go back to revise their papers in response to the comments received and will prepare a 4-page policy brief on the key policy findings from their research. In mid-November, the team will meet again to present and discuss these briefs. Following the November team workshop, the briefs will be revised and sent to press along with the research reports. The research reports and briefs will then feature as the centerpiece of a major policy workshop to be held in late January or early February 2005 intended to present key research findings to the Kenyan research, policymaker, and donor communities. The idea will be to present the policy briefs in the first hour each day, when the Ministers/Permanent Secretaries are present, followed by the detailed papers that flesh out the analysis behind the briefs.

The SAGA-Kenya team will work on formalizing the Kenya Policy Research Forum (KPRF), a network begun under the USAID BASIS CRSP representing the main research institutes, government ministries, and local universities. The intent is to turn KPRF into a regular (e.g., bimonthly or quarterly) meeting to share research results and discuss policy research priorities. The University of Nairobi proposes to take the leadership role initially in organizing and hosting this event.

The Cornell graduate students described under the past six months’ activities will continue their data collection, cleaning and analysis. Mr. Mude, Mr. Amudavi, and Ms. Hogset will each produce at least one paper for the SAGA-Kenya policy conference.

We expect that several of the working papers previously released under SAGA will earn publication after successful peer review, and that the working papers presently under preparation will be completed.

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