Nairobi, June 23 -- Chepkorio Dairy in Elgeyo Marakwet County is widely held aloft as a standout farmer organisation in Kenya's dairy sector.

From its relatively modest beginnings as a cooperative helping members market raw milk in the neighbourhood in 2009, it has since scaled to a robust agribusiness enterprise dealing in milk aggregation and livestock feed production.

Much of that growth has happened in the past five years after the cooperative tapped asset grants under a catalytic financing project backed by Heifer International Kenya, a non-profit organisation that works with smallholder farmers.

Catalytic financing is an investment approach where cheaper capital from public or philanthropic sources is deployed to absorb initial r...