CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
Enlist champions: An element of
KDSCP‘s success can be attributed to
the facilitator champions that have
pushed its agenda and the strategies
and technical support afforded by
Land O Lakes. Such interventions that
adopt a low profile and lead to slower
immediate results require ‗champions‘.
Bring in expertise: The effectiveness
of the KDSC program was bound by
its ability to crowd in the right core
facilitators to provide off the shelf
technical support, and including them
in the drafting of terms of reference as
well as working up specific activities.
This provided for greater creativity
which the individual problems
demanded.
Align expectations: By ensuring that
facilitators and their providers are
handled individually, there is the
potential for ensuring that the program
maximizes its ability to understand
aspirations and expectations. Where
this is aligned, the program maximizes
the opportunity for mainstreaming
services and opens door for
sustainability.
Pay attention to environmental and
gender concerns: The KDSCP takes
into account the varying roles, assets,
knowledge and skills that men,
women and youth bring to dairy
farming. Facilitate the implementation
of opportunities for integrating youth
and family members into dairy value-
chain activities and be ready to effect
corrective action as appropriate.
Provide solutions to key market
based problems as they arise: The
dairy industry in Kenya has
experienced excess milk supply
resulting in low prices, delayed
payments and a resort to informal
markets. To address this issue, the
KDSC program initiated strategies
aimed at expanding the processed
milk market (both domestic and
export). The program launched the
milk quality improvement program and
laid the foundation for sustained
consumer education. In addition, the
program started negotiations with the
Dairy Traders Association (DTA) to
help build capacity of informal milk
traders.
Assess and measure: Different levels
of intermediate outcomes must be
assessed: outreach (number of people
served and who) and outputs (services
delivered) are the most common. But it
is also important to have performance
assessments that provide useful
information for improving services for
small businesses and the cost-
effectiveness and efficiency of service
delivery. Improving services: tracking
businesses satisfaction with services,
how they use services to change their
business practices, and how these
changes are, or are not, benefiting the
business in specific ways. This type of
information helps suppliers adjust their
services to meet demands. Improving
efficiency: This information helps
providers manage the business of
delivering services.
Build credible service ownership:
The most successful services
facilitated by the program were those
which could demonstrate strong
provider ownership and deliver profit.
Keep avoiding subsidies: Responses
from actors can be slow when farmers,
SBOs and SPs expect direct financial
assistance from donors rather than
indirect assistance such as information
and linkages. The BDS approach is still
rather new and the market may require
substantial sensitization to address
resistance. KDSCP experiences slow
recruitment of the target groups and held
several meetings to level expectations
and motivate interest.
Keep avoiding market distortion:
Other programs can perpetuate
dependency attitudes by paying farmers
to attend training or financing inputs and
equipment. Promote a more sustainable
way of enabling business by capacity
building of the key actors via local
training providers and ensuring durable
linkages between actors. Test initiatives
such as encouraging SBOs to develop a
check-off system for members to pay for
services and encouraging members to
contribute to acquire cooling plants – all
from their milk proceeds.
Facilitator „buy in‟ is imperative:
KDSCP tried to use stakeholders to sell
the project concept and drive the
intervention. It is imperative to ensure
adequate buy in and ownership from
facilitators to avoid SBOs and SPs
becoming over dependent on KDSCP
and risk long term sustainability after
project close out.
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