ECHO East Africa Regional Impact Center

The ECHO East Africa Impact Center seeks to extend the services of ECHO to help those working with the poor in East Africa to be more effective, especially in the area of agriculture and livestock management. The ECHO East Africa Impact Center functions primarily as a technical support organization helping community development organizations and workers operate more effectively.

Why East Africa?
Over the past decade, food insecurity has increased for East Africa's rapidly growing population, expected to increase 150% by 2050. This will require higher food production yet it has been declining over the last 40 years. Africa is a net importer of food. Hunger has increased with over 40% of its children malnourished. A large number of these are orphans and vulnerable children who rely on economically stretched extended families. A majority of the rural population lives in poverty and rely on subsistence lifestyles. The causes of this situation include:

• Inappropriate, conventional extension approaches promoting high external input farming practices unaffordable to the poor, and which have not availed surpluses for urban production nor sustained smallholder rural families with nutritious produce throughout the year
• A high percentage of food produced is lost before consumption
• Poorly developed markets, value chains and infrastructures
• Few farmers and fewer pastoralists in the region have access to agricultural extension, continuing education or access to formal credit.
• Communities in many areas have become highly dependent upon food distributions.
• In pastoralist areas, the mostly illiterate population seeks barriers against rustling and wild predators, disease among their livestock, and land alienation to agriculturalists.
• Increased land pressure forcing families to cultivate marginal, erosive lands, with resultant environmental degradation and unsustainable food production.
• Recurring drought particularly in drier pastoralist areas. Rainfall patterns have become more concentrated within fewer months, forcing community members to try earlier maturing crops and strategies to harvest water at home and in fields.

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