We at VACID Africa are involved in promoting opportunity creation along the agricultural value chains in Kenya’s rural smallholder agricultural initiatives. We are currently dealing with the Soybean Value Chain which presents a number of interesting dimensions to health and consequent income generation for rural households.

The communities and ourselves face some challenges as we develop sustainable community enterprises around this initiative.

Are there any experiences on this chain that we can learn from in your regions? I am keen to learn the various approaches to preservation, standardization, and branding approaches.

Can anyone suggest website that provides information on value chain training internationally ( Eg. SEEP, Springfield, ILO and other)

I searched but i got only individual organization wise
suhrid chapagain
value chain advisor
nepal swiss community forestry project
Swiss Intercooperation

Dear All,

In our project we analyse value chain with market mapping that includes primarily three important components
1. Market actors
2. BDS
3. Enabling environment

Then we focus on how to strengthen value chain so that poor can benefit.

Importantly its obvious that “ Value chain development increases income and employment” –

My question is “ so what “ spending large donor amount will ofcourse trigger more activities at value chain level so that more income activities is carried out .

In our case we use two components- one is value chain component which is there for increasing the income of community forestry user group and also its members ( mainly poor – employment)

and other is livelihood component in each we look how the increase in income of CFUG is contributed to livelihood of poor in FREELIFEH2O
F – Fund
R- Representation
E- Education
E- Employment
L- Linkages
I- Inclusion
F- Forest Products
H- Housing materials (humanitarian)
H- Health
O- Others

Thus its important to look deeply on Value chain development balanced by livelihood component (which is more then income) .

Please find attached the document on forest based enterprises and some cases of our project.

Please have you say

suhrid chapagain
value chain advisor
nepal swiss community forestry project
Swiss Intercooperation

Elaine Jones – I am looking to develop a generic training manual for use with informal workers in a range of sectors. I would be interested to know if people think that there is a gap in resources for use at a grass-roots level or if people are aware of materials that already exist.

Most important actors in VCD, especially at macro level that is government. For example is roles in regulation to make conducive business environment (business climate). Without plays active roles from government, in some level at function value chain doesn’t work optimally.

Bastian