The challenge
60% of the Kenyan population of about 40 million live outside the major cities and earn their living through subsistence farming. They depend on unreliable rain to grow their crops and have one or two harvests per year.

The organization
KickStart was founded in 1991 (then known as ApproTEC) with the mission to help millions of people out of poverty by developing and promoting technologies that can be used by dynamic entrepreneurs to establish and run profitable small scale enterprises. Since its founding, KickStart has sold irrigation technologies to tens of thousands of farmers thereby having a significant impact on their incomes.
Link: www.kickstart.org

The program that Voxtra supports
Voxtra supports KickStart with $1.8 million over three years to promote irrigation technologies through commercial channels in Kenya (Voxtra is one of the investors of this program). The main target of the entire Kenya program over the next three years is to sell irrigation pumps to 33,000 farmers, by building awareness around the benefits of irrigation and strengthening the capacity of retailers. KickStart also continues to develop cheaper and better irrigation pumps. The adoption of these technologies will allow the families to increase their incomes significantly. Voxtra has supported the program from October 2009.

Why Voxtra selected this program

• KickStart has successfully taken up the huge challenge of promoting irrigation technologies in a region with very little tradition of irrigation.
• The impact of adopting irrigation technologies is high and direct, transforming the lives of smallholder farmer families. An investment of $35-100 in an irrigation pump is expected to generate an average of $600 per year in net additional income.
• As a principle, KickStart believes in empowering people to help themselves out of poverty, i.e. no handouts. This is in line with Voxtra’s philosophy.
• KickStart is a strong organization, with a professional management team, well-developed systems for financial management and operations monitoring, and a results-oriented approach. The organization is focused on continuous improvement, which is evident in the progress it has made in a number of key areas during the past few years.
• Voxtra sees a potentially large upside in KickStart increasing its sales and marketing effectiveness over the coming years.