Nairobi, July 15 -- If you walk through almost any market in Kenya on a weekday morning, you will see who is feeding this country. Women arranging dry beans and maize before sunrise, loading sukuma wiki onto handcarts, and haggling over tomato prices with traders. They are not a footnote to Kenya's agricultural economy.

They are, for the most part, the agricultural economy. And they have systematically been underserved by the very systems meant to support them.

Kenya is a signatory to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, known as CAADP, which is the African Union's framework for agricultural investment and growth. Under the programme, Kenya has committed to achieving six percent annual agricultural growth.

World ...