Agri-Food Economics Africa was contracted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in May 2018 to conduct a follow-up survey for the project SATISFy (Satellite Technologies, Innovative and Smart Financing for Food Security).  The SATISFy project aims to increase the extent and inclusivity of access to rural credit by relaxing quantity and risk rationing constraints. In particular, the project has introduced risk contingent credit (RCC), a novel financial product that embeds an index insurance component within a credit product to alleviate the need for collateral that might otherwise constrain smallholder farmers’ access to formal financial services. The main objective of the project is to understand the impacts of RCC on farmers’ investments in agricultural production, both in absolute terms as well as relative to traditional credit products using Randomized Control Trials (RCTs). The project is being implemented in Kenya by various partners including IFPRI, University of Greenwich, Cornell University and Equity Bank Kenya Limited.

The survey targeted the same 1,170 households that were interviewed during the baseline survey in 2017, in 5 sub-Counties of Machakos County namely Matungulu, Kangundo, Kathiani, Mwala, and Yatta. The survey involved collection of household-level data and implementation of laboratory-in-field experiments. The data was collected electronically using SurveyCTO platform. Agri-Food Economics Africa worked with IFPRI to pretest and finalize the questionnaire, and train enumerators. All logistics, coordination and implementation of the survey were undertaken by Agri-Food Economics Africa.

These included hiring of enumerators and supervisors, hire of fieldwork vehicles, and provision of tablets for electronic data collection. Agri-Food Economics Africa submitted the data and the final report in a timely manner as stipulated in the contract.