Mission Statement

K-Rep Development Agency (KDA) is a microfinance development organization whose mission is to “empower low-income people, serve as a catalyst for them to increase their participation in the development process, and to enhance their quality of life”.  The corresponding goals are “to increase employment and income opportunities through the development and promotion of appropriate microfinance systems and products for low-income people”. 

K-Rep’s main focus is on expanding financial services to low-income people who have traditionally been ignored by formal financial institutions.  It is the Research and Development arm of the  K-Rep Group.  It is registered as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) under the NGO Co-ordination Act of 1990.

K-Rep Development Agency’s objectives are to:-

The overarching objective of KDA is to develop effective methods of delivery of viable demand-led financial services to low-income people. Specific objectives are to: -

• Identify innovative financial products for low-income people.
• Design, pilot-test, evaluate and re-design innovative financial products.
• Build capacities of community based financial structures and make them effective systems for delivering financial services to low income groups.
• Promote the adoption of the micro finance products that have been developed.
• Enhance the understanding of microfinance development by conducting research and undertaking pilot projects.

Strategies

The main strategy of K-Rep is to identify, test and develop new microfinance products, instruments and mechanisms for the poor so as to organize their financial lives.  The second strategy is to establish appropriate institutions (or facilitate other organizations to do so), which can deliver such products and services.

The strategies are based on the premise that most problems that confront poor people are due to lack of access to appropriate financial services and the inability or unwillingness of mainstream financial institutions to provide such services to the poor.

Current Programmme Activities

K-Rep is currently engaged in the following projects which are at various stages of development:-

 
• The Microleasing Project.
  A pilot project to enable low-income smallholder farmers acquire productive assets as one way of improving smallholder farm productivity and thus, farmer income.  The project targets micro and small entrepreneurs in both rural and urban areas, who are engaged in agribusinesses. The target clients for the asset financing program earn on average 1,500 Kenyan Shillings (USD21) per month, have little or no business experience and own cultivated land of no more than one acre. They are within the 56% of Kenya’s population which lies below the poverty line and their lack of assets, formal businesses and income generating activities has traditionally excluded them from financial services. 
  

  The asset-financing (microleasing) product provides customers with use of the asset under a lease period of 6 to 24 months, with transfer of ownership of the asset to the customer at the expiration of the lease. The product also provides for the provision of technical assistance – typically through KDA’s range of partners – to ensure that the customer can produce and bring his/her product to market.  The project is currently being implemented in four key field offices; Kisii covering Kisii Central, Gucha, Nyamira and Buret districts; Kitale covering Trans Nzoia and Lugari districts, Wundanyi covering Taita Taveta district and Murang’a covering Murang’a and Maragwa districts. Nkubu and Nairobi Field offices were launched during the last quarter of 2006. These field offices specialize in different asset financing; Kisii primarily targets dairy value chain products, Kitale – dairy and crop production, Murang’a and Nkubu– irrigation gear, Wundanyi – dairy and crop production and Nairobi targets artisan’s products.

• Youth Savers Club Initiative
  A pilot project that accesses credit to adolescent girls (12-22 years of age) living in Kibera slum area of Nairobi to start micro-enterprises.  Adolescence is a critical time of life between childhood and adulthood when girls and boys make important decisions about education, work, sexuality, marriage and child bearing. Although these decisions have lifelong consequences, adolescents are not always equipped with information, education, or life skills to make good choices. Adolescence is also time when Kenyan girls are vulnerable to many risks, including: increasing school drop out rates; early marriages; lack of information on reproductive health; limited awareness of their rights; lack of negotiating skills and bargaining power within relationships; alarmingly high and increasing HIV/AIDS infections; increasing poverty within families; growing economic pressures and responsibilities placed on adolescent girls; limited livelihood skills and opportunities; and frequent participation in unsafe income generating activities. Poverty and economic deprivation underlay many of these risks.

Adolescent girls savings project is a three-year intervention research project. The overall goal of the project is to test strategies for extending savings asn financial literacy services to adolescent girls in Kibera slum. It targets out-of-school adolescent girls aged between 12 and 22 years, living in the low income and slum areas of Kenya's capital, Nairobi. The project has four main interventions: Group based savings accounts; access to credit to start or expand businesses; Training in basic business management and life skills; and social support through trusted adults.

Due to the broad social and health needs of adolescents, KDA introduced a program of adult mentoring. The mentors, drawn from various professional backgrounds such as counseling, health, business, and social work, meet with the adolescents on a regular basis to provide support. Mentoring activities include needs assessment, group discussions, educational seminars, one-to-one counseling, recreational activities, referrals to other services, and monthly meetings with the project manager.

Some of the lessons learnt include:

• Adolescent girls have the capacity to borrow and repay their loans, and generate income for themselves and their families through businesses supported by the loans;
  
• Business training is an important complement to savings and credit for adolescents because they are inexperienced in business, and they have a high demand for business ideas and skills.
  
• Social support and life skills training are important for adolescents. The project noted that social circumstances have a direct bearing on adolescents work roles, business activities and efforts to generate income.

Programmes aimed at expanding livelihood opportunities need to consider the broad context of young people's lives. Programmes that recognize the multiple needs of young people and find innovative and creative ways to offer social support in the context of micro finance and other livelihood programmes are more likely to succeed than those that focus on only one aspect.


• FAHIDA: A Savings and Credit Project for HIV/AIDS Inftected and Affected Persons
  This project provides credit and savings intervention to HIV/AIDS infected and affected persons to enable them start or expand their micro enterprises and small scale farming activities. The project was started in 2001 in Western Kenya and has since expanded to all provinces of Kenya. In 2005, KDA entered into new partnership with Christian Children’s Fund and Pathfinder International to provide financial services to HIV/AIDS infected people as well as to caregivers and guardians of Orphans and vulnerable children.  This partnership enlarged the project coverage to include Kiambu, Thika, Nairobi and Mombasa districts.  The project received more funding from USAID to expand the project to Busia district. 

Interventions include access to credit to start and expand businesses, opportunity to save and training in business management skills.  The partners provide care and support to the infected and affected people.  The project has succeeded at improving the economic well being of households before, during and after the disease affects them. Read More...

• Low Cost Housing Project 
  KDA is piloting a low income housing finance project in Nakuru municipality.  The project aims to provide financing to low income people to construct or improve their houses and access land .  The project targets the urban low-income households who have identifited access to secure land tenure and affordable shelter development as their priority need. The project has grown very slowly due to the fact that majority of the target group do not own land in urban areas and majority of those that do have no title deeds

• Tree Nursery Operators Project
  This project provides credit services to Tree Nursery Operators trained in clonal tree biotechnology with an aim of stimulating its production, distribution and to ensure sustainable livelihoods. Provision of credit to tree nursery operators enables them to source capital to establish or expand viable enterprise that will be profitable and ensure guaranteed financial return. Read More

• Research and Development
  The R & D activities are directly related to pilot projects being tested and developed.  The function of R & D includes, product development, monitoring, evaluations, impact assessments, documentation and dissemination.
   

Projects that have been sucessfully developed and institutionalised

• Small Holder Farmer Saving and Credit Product
  
  KDA successfully pilot-tested and refined a savings and credit product for smallholder farmers.  The product was sold to K-Rep Bank in June 2004.
• Health Care Financing

KDA in conjunction with K-Rep Bank and a Health Management Organization (HMO) AAR Health Services successfully developed a health insurance scheme for low-income people.  This project was institutionalized in K-Rep Bank and AAR Health Services in June 2005.The project has made great strides in developing two key products, among others:
1.         Afya Card, "Usalama wa afya yako": is an easy access, best quality, comprehensive and affordable health care package. Afya Card offers both Comprehensive (In and Outpatient) and Inpatient only cover. It is a family based health plan designed to cater for basic Healthcare needs for the whole family.
2.         Afya Loan, "Financing your health care needs": is a loan product that is easy, accessible, affordable and flexible to allow clients to finance the annual membership fees for the Afya Card and repay the loan in installments.



ARIFU Information Centre; Documentation and Dissemination of Information

It  is an outlet for dissemination of information on small and micro enterprise development and microfinance.  It was established in 1994 to address the growing need for information as an integral part of development of the informal sector. 

The Centre’s goal is to process information on and for SME and Microfinance development and making such information easily accessible to SMEs, entrepreneurs, policy makers, researchers, donors, practitioners, students and consultants. It provides easy access to books, periodicals, reports, research papers and unpublished papers. The centre also maintains a computerized database system on literature, institutions, projects, and a catalogue of publications.

Services offered

• Library facilities - book borrowing, computerised searches for specific information, book reservations etc.
• Reference materials
• Reprography
• Sale of K-Rep publications on SME and microfinance development.

Operations:- Open on Tuesdays only from 8.30 a.m. – 4.30 p.m.
Location:- Situated at Naivasha Road, Riruta