KEFAT - KGT

Increasing the Impact of Fair Trade in Kenya

Kenya Federation for Alternative Trade

Start: 2003

Field of action: Kenya

Members: 25 organizations representing about 150,000 people

KEFAT, the Kenya Federation for Alternative Trade, was created in 2003 to initiate a national network on fair trade. This federation, a member of IFAT (International Federation for Alternative Trade), has 25 members involved in production, development or marketing fair trade products.

Context

The fair trade market is a very competitive market. In Kenya, the challenges producers encounter are mainly:

prices that are too high because of a production system that is not very efficient

a long marketing chain

low salaries

difficult access to product and market information

poor knowledge of fair trade

difficult access to credit

difficulty in finding trade outlets and profiting from market opportunities

KEFAT’s very reason for being is to allow better access to product and market information see above on same question, by putting producer organizations in contact with fair trade organizations.

To do so, KEFAT’s position will have to be strengthened.

Partnership to strengthen KEFAT

The general goal of the project is to strengthen, with the support from the Fair Trade Centre, a network that connects all the organizations to increase the profits earned from fair trade. This is done by organizing more activities connected to exploring and profiting from the markets, to awareness raising, to production capacities, to product development and by creating close relationships between the organizations. Strengthening KEFAT’s position means it will be able to work more closely with other regional and international organizations, the private sector and the government and in this way to position itself in a more favourable commercial environment.

More specifically, the project needs funding to facilitate:

administrative and logistical support from the KEFAT secretariat

the reinforcement of this same secretariat to increase its capacity to provide effective fair trade services

the promotion of KEFAT (business cards, brochures, seminars, meetings, etc.) and thus increasing the number of members

access by members to services on product development and market penetration capacity.

First, it will be a matter of strengthening KEFAT’s internal capacity and, second, developing long-term strategies in collaboration with organizations like IFAT or COFTA (the Africa-wide KEFAT). Seminars and consultations with all the stakeholders will be organized to define KEFAT’s five-year strategic plan. Administrative and logistic support will be provided by KGT (Kenya Gatsby Trust) throughout this period.