Value Chain Development: Care Kenya’s Challenge to Make Markets Work for the Poor (A)

This case examines how CARE, a non-profit international development organization, begins to pursue a market-based approach to meeting its poverty-reduction mission. Specifically, a CARE project manager explores how previous work with low-income livestock herders in drought-prone eastern Kenya might offer an opportunity to work with value chain actors to improve access to markets and increase farmers’ incomes.<br><br>With the Kenyan livestock project as the pilot for this new approach, Case (A)’s main decision point concerns a strategic choice on what role CARE should play in the value chain to support low-income pastoralists. Options include 1) becoming directly involved in value chain transactions, buying and selling livestock, and providing inputs to farmers or 2) acting as a value chain facilitator to provide the information and incentives to existing actors to make the value chain more efficient and inclusive for low-income producers. This strategic decision is part of a larger proposal that students are tasked to create for CARE’s market-based livestock project.

<ul><li>Value chain conceptualization.</li><li>Value chain mapping.</li><li>Understanding value chain roles.</li><li>Understanding the movement in the international development community toward more market-based approaches.</li><li>To provide an example of learning from failure and changing course based on difficult experience.</li></ul>

• Value Chain
• Social Entrepreneurship
• Non-profit Organization
• Agriculture
• Market Analysis
• Kenya
• Africa