This is the first country programme evaluation of Kenya by the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD, since the Fund started its operations in the country in 1979.

Among other areas, the evaluation found useful results in natural resources management and environmental conservation, community development, and the introduction over time of approaches that favour income generation and commercialisation of small farmers as a means to rural poverty reduction.

IFAD’s performance as a partner in Kenya has been considered as satisfactory in more or less the last decade. At the same time, the country programme evaluation underlines that the highly varied nature of sub-sector activities financed through IFAD-supported projects in Kenya and insufficient attention to policy dialogue and strategic partnerships with bilateral and multilateral donors have constrained the Fund from contributing even more widely to improving rural incomes and livelihoods. Furthermore, its largely exclusive focus, in the past, on medium to high potential areas in the south west of the country has also not enabled the Fund to contribute to exploiting the largely untapped economic potential in the arid and semi-arid lands, where around 50 per cent of all rural poor people live in Kenya.