Kenya country strategic plan (2023 - 2027)

CSP approved at EB June 2023 Session.

Kenya, East Africa’s largest, most developed economy, has just seven years to realize its “Vision 2030” of becoming a modern, innovative, middle-income country, a stable and peaceful democracy, food-secure and with equitable access to public services for health, education, and human rights, on the path to a “green transition” in which no one is left behind. The same 2030 deadline looms for Kenya in meeting its global commitments to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Kenya however remains on the frontline of the climate crisis and is once again facing a food security crisis: five consecutive failed rainy seasons have led to low livestock yields and poor crop production, scarcity of grazing land and water resources is driving localized conflict, the global food crisis has sent food prices soaring, with an estimated 5.4 million people in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands enduring crisis levels and above of acute food insecurity, and 970,000 children under 5 and 142,000 pregnant or lactating women and girls urgently in need of treatment for acute malnutrition. Seeking relief from regional drought, refugees and asylum seekers continue to arrive in large numbers, joining the more than 500,000 people living in camps in the arid and semi-arid lands, some of which were established more than three decades ago.

“Business as usual” will neither meet humanitarian needs nor address Kenya’s recurring long-term food insecurity challenges. To save lives in Kenya sustainably, WFP must increasingly seek to change lives. To achieve scale and impact, WFP will apply a multidimensional conception of its mandate, harnessing innovative, integrated, risk-informed programming within a “changing lives to save lives” agenda, delivering immediate and ongoing support to boost food access and availability and medium- to long-term action to build climate-resilient food systems.

Approaching the humanitarian–development–peace nexus as a spectrum of interconnected concerns, WFP will continue its drought emergency response in order to meet the projected rises in essential needs while also opening proven pathways from relief to resilience building that link humanitarian action to national and county-level development priorities, calibrated to achieve the broadest measurable impact on the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition in Kenya. WFP will vigorously pursue this strategic shift beyond the period covered by this country strategic plan, seeking to achieve a full transition to enabling approaches by 2030.

To advance and expand its “changing lives” portfolio, the WFP Kenya country office will embrace capacity strengthening of national and county systems as the central strategic driver for supporting shock-responsive social protection, safety nets and disaster and climate risk management. Noting lessons from the independent evaluation of the country strategic plan for 2018–2023, WFP has developed a supply chain strategy that is integrated internally across the country strategic plan portfolio and aligned externally with the priorities of Kenya and its partners in the United Nations system. WFP will embed capacity strengthening in its reorganized supply chain activities, expanding South–South and triangular cooperation. Through strategic partnerships, WFP will work with Kenya’s private sector to unlock its potential to invest in innovative programme delivery models that expand economic opportunities for women, youth, urban populations, persons with disabilities and other underrepresented groups.

Powered by innovation and systems thinking, and informed by a theory of change and analysis, evidence, lessons and gains from the country strategic plan for 2018–2023, WFP proposes a four‑year plan in Kenya anchored in Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 17, framed by WFP’s global strategic plan for 2022–2025, aligned with the United Nations sustainable development cooperation framework for 2022–2026 for Kenya and the Government’s fourth medium-term plan for 2023–2027, and to be implemented through a portfolio of four fully integrated strategic outcomes:

• Outcome 1. To ensure people are better able to meet their urgent food and nutrition needs, WFP will provide life-saving, hunger-reducing and nutrition-sensitive support, integrating the treatment of acute malnutrition with prevention for refugees and other people most at risk before, during and in the aftermath of shocks. Moving from a camp- to a settlement-based approach, in line with changes in the policies of national and county-level government, WFP will scale up self-reliance activities, linking them to resilience-building activities under outcome 2 and to capacity strengthening for the Government and its partners under outcome 3.
• Outcome 2. To ensure people have improved and sustainable livelihoods,WFP will apply proven approaches that make food systems more climate-resilient, productive, inclusive, equitable, environmentally sustainable, and better able to provide safe, healthy and nutritious diets for all people and communities. WFP will work with affected people, households and communities to recover livelihoods and build capacity to anticipate, withstand and adapt to climate, environmental and economic shocks and stressors. In line with national priorities, WFP will place strong emphasis on empowering youth and women in agriculture, water management and other viable value chains.
• Outcome 3. Ensuring national systems are strengthened is central to WFP’s strategic shift in role from an implementer to an enabler in Kenya and lays the foundation for WFP’s medium- to long-term transition strategy. Embedded in actions under country strategic plan outcomes 1 and 2, WFP will apply innovation and its own comparative advantages to support capacity strengthening for government, national and county systems for a transition to full ownership of gender- and shock-responsive social protection and disaster and climate risk reduction and mitigation that facilitate anticipatory action.
• Outcome 4. To ensure humanitarian and development actors are more efficient and effective, WFP will put supply chain at the centre of programme integration, innovation and implementation, acting as an operational enabler of the shift to capacity strengthening, building data and knowledge management capacity and systems, and supporting Kenya and its United Nations partners with safe, inclusive supply chain services. Through the WFP-managed United Nations Humanitarian Air Service and expanded service provision, WFP will continue to provide mandated and on-demand services that reach people at risk and respond to needs and emergencies.

WFP’s cross-cutting corporate concerns – nutrition, gender equality and women’s empowerment, protection and accountability to affected populations, and environmental sustainability – are key strategic drivers of programme integration under this country strategic plan. With strengthened data collection, analysis and knowledge management capacity that is better aligned with national systems, the WFP Kenya country office will track and measure in collaboration with the national and county governments how its resilience investments are reducing humanitarian requirements and expanding WFP’s impact beyond that of direct implementation and assistance.

To mobilize sufficient resources for this country strategic plan WFP is pursuing innovative financing models and joint programming approaches that will leverage the opportunities available from governments, international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the private sector and other partners.

WFP is an essential member of the Kenya United Nations country team and has been actively engaged in the preparation of the 2021 common country analysis, ensuring that the proposed outcomes of this country strategic plan are derived from and well-aligned with WFP’s contribution to the strategic priorities of the United National sustainable development cooperation framework for 2022–2026. WFP has adopted a four-year duration for this country strategic plan to remain in sync with cooperation framework.