Stabilizing Production under Climate Stress: Evidence from Small-Scale Solar Irrigation in Kenya

Abstract

Smallholder agriculture underpins livelihoods in Kenya, with more than 70% of the rural population relying on farming as their primary source of income. Most of these farmers rely on rainfed production in an environment marked by rising temperatures, increasingly variable rainfall, and frequent economic and climate shocks. Research led by Duke University and the University of Nairobi evaluated the SunCulture model—a Kenyan social enterprise providing small-scale solar irrigation systems bundled with financing and support services. The study ends with three sets of implications: National irrigation policy should move beyond a focus on large-scale, publicly delivered schemes to better support the smallholder-led investment pathways that are already driving irrigation expansion. Solar irrigation companies, lenders, and other market participants should work to reduce affordability barriers by offering repayment terms that reflect farmers’ seasonal cash flows, linking financial support to verified outcomes, and bundling services that lower early-stage adoption risk. Measurement and evidence systems should be developed further to better capture the value of resilience-enhancing interventions, including building confidence around co-benefits of carbon mitigation.

Ecosystem actors should adopt standardized, decision-relevant resilience metrics that can enable comparison and prioritization of interventions across sectors and geographies. Across these areas, the evaluation highlights that intrahousehold decision-making and labor dynamics influence how irrigation investments translate into household outcomes, underscoring that impacts may vary across households and over time.