Blog post
Rapid situation analysis and action planning, with due attention for informal, formal and semi-formal actors
Suba-South is a poor and remote Constituency in South-West Kenya. The local society and economy heavily relies on many different informal actors, who exist next to formal and semi-formal actors. When conceiving action plans for local development, it is very important to see all the actors and to engage with them from the start. All actors, formal, informal and semi-formal could jointly develop a vision and action plan for fighting the poverty of the constituency. Together they could advocate for investments that are important for all, for instance the improvement of roads. Informal actors can play their roles for addressing the structural development bottlenecks.
By Ted Schrader
Written by Gordon Wanzare (Step Up, Kisumu Kenya) and edited by Ted Schrader (Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation).
This blog is part of the informal economies trajectory of Wageningen University and Research together with alumni from different countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America (KB-35 programme 2023-2024).
Suba South is known for high poverty levels and poor infrastructure
With more than half of the population under the poverty threshold, Suba South, is one of the poorest Constituencies in Kenya. It is part of Homa Bay, a county in South-West Kenya at the shores of Lake Victoria. The livelihoods of the more than 120,000 inhabitants largely depend on crop and livestock farming and fishing. Having a poor road network, inadequate water supply, unreliable electricity, and erratic mobile network coverage, the Constituency is underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure.



Great diversity of informal, semi-formal and formal actors in the food system
If you are interested to get to grips with a local administrative entity, like a Constituency, a County or District, it is important to map the actors that operate in the locality. Even in a remote and poor Constituency like Suba-South, there are very many actors and these are very diverse. Some actors clearly operate in informality, some clearly in a formal set-up, while there are also quite a few that are in-between and can be labelled as semi-formal.
- Family farms are small in size. Mixed farming is practiced with maize as the main crop. Other crops are beans, groundnuts, millet, sorghum, and vegetables. Farmers rear local breeds of cattle, goats, and sheep on open fields and have free ranging poultry. These family farms are informal and are not registered as enterprises although there is some element of farming as a business.
- Most farmer organisations are small and informal (farmer groups and associations, women groups, saving and credit groups). There are only some nascent cooperatives that are registered.
- Micro and small-scale input suppliers sell seeds, agrochemicals and veterinary products to smallholder farmers. They are mostly registered as sole proprietors and also have local business permits. In most cases they are a source of technical information for farmers. Depending on their relation with farmers, they can provide inputs on credit.
- Machinery services are provided by individuals with farm machinery, mainly tractors and implements. They provide land development services, mainly ploughing, to the smallholder farmers. In most cases, they are not registered as enterprises.
- Labourers are individuals, or small informal groups, providing temporary labour services (planting, weeding, spraying, harvesting) to the family farms. They have limited bargaining power and are not registered as service providers. Only some laborers are part of registered welfare groups.
- Small traders (commonly referred to as ‘middlemen’) act as the link between farmers and off-takers. They are mostly individuals who aggregate produce from smallholder farmers and sell to millers or directly to individual consumers or institutions such as schools, colleges, hospitals, and hotels. They are rarely registered as businesses.
- Vehicle transport services are provided by individuals who own and operate transport vehicles. They operate informally when they provide transport services to farmers. Their vehicles are however commercially registered with the National Transport and Safety Authority.
- Motorbike transport (boda-boda) by individual drivers is the main mode of transport for farm inputs, produce and people due to the bad roads.
- Small-scale millers are individuals with mini-milling machinery, popularly known as ‘posho mills’, for milling maize, millet, and cassava. These mini-mills are located in trading centers and have some form of formality, because it is mandatory for them to have a business permit issued by the County Government. The unique aspect of these mini-mills is that they only provide milling services and do not own the raw materials (maize, millet, sorghum) nor the processed product (flour).
- The main milling company in the locality is Kigoto Maize Milling Plant, a medium-scale miller, owned by Homa Bay County Government. It started its operations in 2023. It mills locally sourced maize and markets the maize flour mainly in Homa Bay County and its surroundings.
- Retailers are micro-enterprises that trade a variety of household groceries including maize, beans, millet, and sorghum either as grains or flour. They operate small shops popularly known as ‘dukas’ or ‘kiosks’. They have a local business permit. Others operate in open air markets or market sheds, particularly during market days, and focus on retailing one or two commodities or vegetables. Retailers and hawkers are largely informal.
- Wholesalers are small enterprises that mainly supply micro-retailers with a variety of household groceries including maize, beans, millet and sorghum, either as grains or flour. They have a local business permit and also operate in trading centers and towns.
- Individual consumers can be considered informal, while there are also institutional consumers like schools, colleges and hospitals, which are registered with relevant government authorities.
- Hotels and restaurants are generally formally registered, but do quite some informal business.
- For public services, Homa Bay County and its public service departments are most important. Because of the high farmer-extension staff ratio, the outreach of agricultural extension services is very limited.
- Other formal actors that reach Suba South are Non-Governmental Organisations, Community-Based Organizations, radio and TV stations.
This inventory and short description of actors shows that the Suba-South Constituency heavily relies on many different informal actors, who exist next to formal and semi-formal actors. When conceiving action plans for local development, it is very important to see all the actors and to engage with them from the start. Examples:
- Collaboration with semi-formal input suppliers for improving access to affordable seeds and inputs of proven quality.
- Supporting informal farmer groups and associations that do exist in many forms (some of which may graduate to formal organisations).
- Developing appropriate financial products for small informal or semi-formal entrepreneurs.
- Linking farmer resource persons to the limited number of local government extension workers.
Engage all actors for road rehabilitation and improved market access
The poor roads are a major challenge in Suba South. Until one year ago, there was no single tarmacked or paved road in the locality. All roads are either poorly graded or not graded at all. Particularly when it rains, these roads are impassable. The bad roads and high transport costs have many consequences:
- Because of the bad state of the roads, the movement of inputs coming in and agricultural produce going out is strongly impaired, resulting to high input costs, low farm gate prices and high post-harvest losses.
- There are still virgin farmlands available that could be used for increasing production volumes. At this moment, this is not very attractive because low farm gate prices.
- Farmers have to travel for about one hour to access financial services in neighboring towns such as Sori and Mbita (hardly any financial institutions present in Suba South).
- Machinery service providers have to travel for nearly two hours to neighboring sugarcane growing areas to access spare parts and qualified technicians for maintaining and repairing tractors and implements. They these services in.
Improving road infrastructure for efficient transport of inputs, produce, and people is a top priority for the constituency leadership and all actors. The current tarmacking of the main access road can create many new opportunities and can bring stakeholders together. Also for road rehabilitation, it is possible to engage with informal actors, for instance for the contribution to road opening and maintenance.
Strategic food system investments that are important for formal and informal actors
All actors, formal, informal and semi-formal could jointly develop a vision and action plan for fighting the poverty of the constituency. Together they could advocate for investments that are important for all. With improved infrastructure and market access, investments and entrepreneurial activities will follow. Possible investments are the following:
- Aggregation and storage. In addition to high transport costs, the main challenge for value chain development is the lack of collection centers. Traders store collected produce in makeshift rooms in market centers, which leads to high storage losses. This implies that traders can only source at the farm gate, which they only do if they have a guaranteed market.
- Increased milling capacity of the local Kigoto Maize Milling can create more demand for local produce and can possibly lead to contract farming relations.
- Given that Lake Victoria is near, opportunities for export of farm produce to Tanzania and Uganda can be explored. Prices for maize, beans, and groundnuts may be more attractive there.
These examples show that strategic investments can work out positively for both formal and informal actors.
For more information you can contact Gordon Wanzare at: gordonwanzare@gmail.com