By Kimuri Mwangi
Young people have been urged to embrace smart agriculture, especially agroforestry, as a means of earning income and tackling the effects of climate change.
The Kenya National Farmers Federation (KENAFF) runs a programme that encourages youth to be more involved in agribusiness ventures and mentors them to sustain the ventures.
“We have a department called KENAFF Young, and one of the objectives is to promote youth involvement in climate action, and we are doing this through mentoring young people to be part of agroforestry as a whole. Apart from just the mentoring, we empower them through training to be able to cascade this knowledge down in their different communities where they come from. As we all know, the importance of agroforestry cannot be overstated, really, but things like restoring soil health and improving degraded land are also important,” says Valary Otieno, the Head of KENAFF Young.
She added that since the youth are the majority in the community, they hold the solutions to most of the problems affecting society, like climate change, unemployment and food security, if they are nurtured and supported.
One of the methods they use to mentor the young people is by getting them involved in activities that enable them to experience the real situation on the ground and letting them become a part of the solution. This year’s International Forest Day was no exception as they involved the young people in community service.
“Today we are celebrating International Forest Day, and we are here to plant trees at Maai Mahiu. This is a place that had a disaster last year in April, and we are here to restore the catchment area and to replace the trees that were swept away by the floods. The trees will hold back the soil together, and then we’ll be able to curb future disasters,” opines Mary Kageni, the Head of Climate Action at KENAFF.
The team planted five species of trees and propagated seven others by throwing seed balls in the areas that they could not access uplands.
“We are joined by the community from Kinale Community Forest Association, the Kenya Forest Service and the area Chief. We are also joined by students from the Kenya Inter University Environmental Students Association (KIUESA). We have five institutions represented, that is the Technical University of Kenya, Mount Kenya University, the University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and the KCA University,” added Kageni.
Moses Odhiambo, the Secretary General of the Kenya Inter University Environmental Students Association, who was part of the team, appealed to the youth to embrace climate-smart agriculture, saying it pays a lot and requires less.
“Agroforestry has a lot of benefits, like employment creation for the youth and also for the environment. First of all, we conserve a lot of soil, and then also agroforestry practices help us with carbon sequestration, which is a major pollutant in the atmosphere, and that’s what brings about the issues of climate change. Agroforestry is one of the ways to restore this plan, and that’s why we need to engage the youth because we are more energetic to reclaim the lost ecosystems and also to prevent such from happening in other areas,” he said.
The local Chief urged other stakeholders to emulate KENAFF in the restoration of the area’s ecosystem.
“We are happy to join KENAFF as they assist us in reclaiming this land, which was destroyed through the floods that carried away the vegetation, and now you can see how it is. It was quite a huge damage, and we lost many lives and property, and that’s why we have seen it very important to join them. We are welcoming all partners to come and join us as we reclaim the area,” said Zechariah Igeria, the Senior Chief of Maii Mahiu Location.
Peter Mureu, a resident of the area, thanked the young people for accepting to be part of the initiative, saying they couldn’t manage to restore the area alone without support.
