Diana Njihia from Vi Agroforestry at SIANI regional network meeting in Nairobi 2023.

1. Photo: Robin Asselmayer
Vi Agroforestry for Inclusive,Sustainable Food Systems
Diana Njihia

2. Vi Agroforestry is a Swedish non-profit foundation established in 1983.
We work with local partner organizations in East Africa, mainly in
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to empower smallholders’ farmers and
their organizations to improving their living conditions.
Vi Agroforestry has 40 years of experience in promoting agroforestry,
sustainable agriculture, human rights-based approaches, gender
equality, and empowerment of women, men, youth, and children.
Who we are

3. Vision A sustainable environment that
enables women and men living in
poverty to improve their lives
Vision and Mandate

4. Mission : To fight poverty and climate change –
together. Empowering smallholder farmer
families socially and economically, building
their resilience while enhancing
biodiversity and climate change mitigation
through sustainable agricultural land
management, including agroforestry.
Vision and Mandate

5. • Smallholder farmer families – with a special focus on
women, youth and children living in a situation of poverty.
We target farmer families who are likely to have limited
access to productive resources and opportunities, and
who experience food insecurity and the effects of climate
change.
Target Groups

6. • Promotes Agroforestry and Other sustainable
Agricultural Land Management Practices that include
nutrient management, soil and water conservation,
Agronomic practices, integrated livestock
management, integrated pest management, tillage
and residue management, energy conservation
restoration and rehabilitation
Key Programme Methodology

7. • Human rights-based approach (HRBA)
• Gender transformative approach
• Leave no one behind
• Conflict sensitive approach
• Anti-corruption
• Enabling civic space
• Local to global advocacy
• Multi-stakeholder engagement
Approaches to development work

8. 1. Core partner:
These are the small holder member-based farmers’
organisations. The membership in these organisations enables
the reach to the grassroots. The focus here is to strengthen the
capacity of these organisations to engage duty bearers, while at
the same time having the ability to provide a support system to
the members.
Types of partners in Vi agroforestry

9. 2. Technical Partners: These are organisations that might not
necessarily be member based but have specialised capacity and
skills that could be a gap for the core partners.
3. Strategic Partners: These are regional bodies, research
organisations, universities, peer organisations, among others that
are relevant to our working areas. Vi Agroforestry is keen on
strengthening alliances and building relationships that make it
efficient to jointly act such as codesigning interventions for bigger
impact.

10. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
1. Strengthening Farmer
Organizations
• Strengthen governance of the partners at
leadership and management. It should be
inclusive of women, youth and
underrepresented groups
• Encouraging inclusive membership to farmer
organization e.g expand the membership
criteria to include the schools.

11. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
1. Strengthening Farmer
Organizations
• Support women and youth dialogues with
communities on gender inequities in
decision making in access and control of
resources.

12. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
2. Strengthening resilient
agricultural livelihoods
• Promoting inclusive Food systems Business
Models through engendering value chains.
• Creating Pro-poor business linkages
opportunities by collaborating with other
organizations that work with support small
holder farmers organizations.

13. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
2. Strengthening resilient
agricultural livelihoods
• Promoting inclusive agricultural value chains
by strengthening the non-financial services
and financial services offered to the members
by the farmer organizations.

14. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
3. Promoting Environment
conservation, Climate change
and Biodiversity
Enhancing the capacity of farmer organizations to
conduct environment, climate change and gender
analysis/impact on the production practices that
they are promoting.
Encourage tree, crop and animal diversity
practices among the farmers including traditional
indigenous foods.
Promoting Sustainable Agriculture land
Management practices and seed saving

15. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
3. Promoting Environment
conservation, Climate change
and Biodiversity
• Collaborating on Innovation and technology to
realizing efficiency of food systems e.g KARLO
collaboration on growing of beans (nyota)
which are rich in iron and drought tolerant
• Climate offsetting through agricultural
techniques promoted increase carbon
sequestration in trees and soils support Small
holder participation in carbon markets.

16. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
4. Food and Nutrition Security • Building the capacity of the farmer organizations
on food security.
• Promoting nutrition education in schools,
among farmer organizations.
• Promoting nutrient rich foods like enriched
beans with more iron, yellow fleshed sweet
potatoes.
• Promoting food utilization of indigenous foods.

17. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
5. Policy and Advocacy • Supporting Inclusivity environment in policy
development. Community-members, youth,
women, underrepresented groups engagement
in policy making, Implementation and
monitoring.
• Building the capacity of farmer organizations to
undertake advocacy and policy engagement to
ensure development of responsive policies.

18. Role of Vi Agroforestry in transforming food systems into inclusive
and sustainable food systems
Key Result Area Intervention Areas
5. Policy and Advocacy • Promoting the adoption of the agroforestry
strategy, food security and environmental
policies to enhance and protect agricultural land
resources.

19. OUR FUTURE

20. Agrobiodiversity on farm

21. https://viagroforestry.org/
More Information & Contacts

22. Thank you!