Resilience of dairy production for urban marketing in East Africa (KB-22-002-006)

This comparative study on the Ethiopian and Kenyan dairy sector aims to generate a better understanding into the contribution of dairy input supply and advisory services to more market-oriented approaches in smallholder dairy farming, while maintaining resilience of these farming systems. The goal of this research is to explore the relationships between input supply and advisory services, farming systems, and people-profit-planet resilience, in order to identify options to improve the adaptive capacity of farms and value chain. A transition to more market-oriented dairy farming is necessary to meet the growing urban demand for dairy products. That urban demand is growing quickly due to urbanisation and rising incomes, and the East African highlands are well suited to meet this demand. The research will contribute to development of effective models of input supply and service delivery, as well as to the question how the resilience of farms can be strengthened under increasing intensification.