Leveraging Collective Action by Self Help Groups for Sustainable Food Security among Households in Nyakach Sub County, Kenya
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Abstract
Household food security in Kenya has been deteriorating steadily with one in every two households classified as absolutely food poor. Food insecure households are concentrated among the female-headed households especially in rural areas, the urban poor and resource poor households that live in high potential agricultural areas. Nyakach Sub County is typically dry, particularly the Lower and West Nyakach divisions, with a single rainy season (March to May), and relies heavily on other farming activities, such as goat, cattle and sheep keeping as its primary form of agriculture. However, the agricultural industry in the area is currently underperforming, resulting in low food production. The sub-county relies on imported food as a supplement to locally produced food. The records at the Sub-County Social Services Office indicate that the area has 796 SHGs, as at December 2023. Based on the foregoing, the study examined how leveraging on collective action by Self Help Groups influence sustainable food security among households in Nyakach Sub County, Kenya. This study was grounded on the Theory of Collective Action and was guided by mixed research design, with both quantitative and qualitative methodologies of data collection. The target population was 796 SHG members in different SHGs in Nyakach Sub County, from which 75 respondents were administered with structured questionnaires for quantitative data as well as 4 focus group discussions for qualitative data. The information collected through questionnaires were tabulated, coded, edited and analyzed by using the statistical techniques live averages, percentages, standard deviations, and correlation using SPSS version 26, while qualitative data were analysed through thematic content analysis. The findings of the study demonstrated that SHGs were relevant in pooling of resources through collective action and hence contributed highly in enhancing sustainable food security among the SHG members through the increase of food production and the economic activities undertaken by these SHGs like savings and working with financial institutions for getting loans and for input acquisition and capacity building of SHGs members have played a big role in sustaining food security among the households. Therefore, the study recommends that there is need to develop SHGs’ organizational and resource capacity to profit even more households. This could increase access to agricultural production resources hence increased farm production and growth in farm income.
Keywords
Collective Action; Households; Nyakach sub-county; Self Help Group; Sustainable Food Security
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