KOMAZA has chosen to launch our tree farming project in Kilifi district on Kenya's coast. The social, environmental and climatic characteristics of Kilifi make it an ideal location for our tree farming model. As KOMAZA expands, Kwale district to the south and Malindi district to the north offer many of the same favorable traits. Kilifi is also situated along the coastal Mombasa-Malindi highway, providing easy access to the major timber markets of these two cities.
Most families living in Kilifi district suffer from severe and chronic poverty. Over 80% of families are small-scale farmers who grow maize, cassava and beans. These farmers live in the parts of Kilifi district classified as semi-arid lowlands, which are characterized by low to moderate soil quality and highly erratic rainfall levels. These environmental conditions are barely sufficient for over 500,000 Kilifi residents to survive hand-to-mouth on poor crop yields. The unreliable rainfall pattern results in widespread food shortages as crops fail from either drowning or drought. Families have no capital to invest, no access to profitable drought-tolerant crops and no access to high-profit markets. Lacking all the necessities of profitable agriculture, farm families have little chance of escaping their chronic, extreme poverty.
The environment of the Kenyan coast, including that of Kilifi district, has been severely damaged by the region's burgeoning demand for timber. Natural coastal forests are largely depleted due to unchecked mass harvesting of fuel wood by local families. Many villages in the poorest regions of Kilifi District have devastated their natural forest resources by inefficiently burning it into charcoal, which is sold at a small profit to semi-urban families. With less than 4% indigenous forest cover and only about 1,700 acres of plantation forests, Kilifi’s fuel wood crisis is escalating.
KOMAZA's trees are ideally suited to address the social, agricultural and environmental problems in Kilifi district. Our trees will serve as a high-value crop which is resilient to both poor soil quality and erratic rainfall, and we will provide all of the resources and training necessary for poor farm families to cultivate this crop. Tree farming will ease pressure on indigenous forests by sustainably meeting the market demand for timber. Finally, our trees have the potential to stave off some of the environmental side-effects of Kilifi's deforestation, such as soil erosion and desertification.
