AIM4Commodities: Advancing traceability and Digital Public Infrastructure in Kenya’s coffee sector

Kenya

From May to July 2025, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), with funding from the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ)  and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, carried out two missions to Kenya under the AIM4Commodities work stream and the AIM4Forests programme. As one of four pilot countries, alongside Colombia, Viet Nam and Lao PDR, Kenya is testing and scaling up approaches to strengthen forest monitoring, enhance supply chain traceability, and promote sustainable land use through Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).  

The missions brought together national authorities, private sector stakeholders, cooperatives and development partners to exchange knowledge, pilot Open Foris solutions on the ground, and develop capacity in the coffee sector to comply with zero-deforestation regulations. They marked an important step toward preparing Kenya’s coffee sector for sustainable deforestation-free trade. 

Connecting stakeholders around shared goals

Engagement began in Nairobi on May 19, where FAO held bilateral discussion with the Forestry Department (Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry) on opportunities to strengthen their forest monitoring system, improve access to land use data, and integrate DPI solutions such as Open Foris Ground and Whisp. 

A multi-stakeholder Technical Workgroup Meeting followed under the AIM4Forests programme (funded by the United Kingdom), convening nearly 100 participants, including the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), the Kenya Coffee Directorate (KCD), and the Kenya Coffee Platform. The AIM4Commodities initiative was presented as a timely contribution to national efforts for zero-deforestation compliance.   

Piloting Open Foris solutions: empowering cooperatives 

In Nandi County, FAO organized hands-on training at Toroton Farmers Cooperative Society (FCS). Forty cooperative members and extension officers from Toroton and neighboring cooperatives learned about the use of Open Foris Ground to map coffee plots and the digital requirements for international market access. 

This direct engagement empowered producers to take ownership of their data. A smaller focus session followed, where selected participants were trained to design surveys through the Ground web platform, laying the foundation for locally driven monitoring. 

Complementary meetings with national authorities and private sector reinforced momentum. Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG), Kenya’s largest coffee exporter, expressed interest in deploying Open Foris solutions to strengthen traceability, while the Kenya Coffee Directorate (part of the Agriculture and Food Authority – AFA) explored options to adopt the Open Foris solutions to manage export authorizations and data hosting. 

Unlocking data for improved risk assessment 

Access to accurate and recent geospatial data was a recurring theme across missions. FAO explored integrating Kenya’s Land Use Land Cover (LULC) maps from 2000, 2010 and 2018 into Open Foris Whisp, improving deforestation risk assessments by including crop classifications. 

Exchanges with partners such as CELIM (Centro Laici Italiani per le Missioni), the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and the CIAT-Bioversity Alliance explored opportunities to share data resources and support ongoing geolocation campaigns. 

Scaling up from cooperatives to national coffee information systems  

Momentum from the first training in May was quickly scaled up in July, when FAO combined field-based training with high-level engagement at the AGX Unconference (22-24 July) in Nairobi. Cooperative members from Nandi County, who had mapped nearly 2 000 plots following the May training, joined the stage to share their success.  

At the same event, AFA and the CIAT–Bioversity Alliance presented the concept of a National Coffee Information System (NCIS) to host geodata and essential metadata—laying the groundwork for a national GeoID registry. New initiatives were also catalyzed: Agri-Solutions Enterprises Ltd (ASEL) secured a USD 20,000 mini-grant for a youth-led coffee traceability initiative to help thousands of farmers prepare for EUDR compliance, building on prior data collection experience with Open Foris Ground. 

Training surge: from field mapping to risk analysis 

In late July, intensive training reached 176 stakeholders in Nandi and Embu. 

In Nandi (28–29 July), 111 participants, mostly smallholders and cooperative representatives, created surveys with Open Foris Ground, mapped coffee plots in the field, and reviewed results in Open Foris Whisp. Their feedback generated concrete suggestions to make both solutions, Ground and Whisp, more intuitive and accurate for the benefit of farmers and cooperatives.  The training also created space for peer-to-peer learning. Members of two cooperatives who had been trained at Toronton FCS in May, had launched their own geolocation campaigns using Ground. They were invited to this second larger training to share the experiences with their peers. 

Jeremiah Letting, chairman of Meteitei Set Kobor FCS, explained: “With Ground we conducted our geolocation campaign starting in June and have been able to map over 60% of our members, and hopefully in the next month we are going to complete mapping of our farmers. Until now, we have mapped 380 farmers.”  

Peter Kibet, from Toroton FCS, commented: “We have used Open Foris Ground app to map my cooperative’s coffee farms, so they can comply with the EU Regulation.” In one month, they were able to map more than 1,500 plots belonging to 950 farmers. 

In Embu (31 July-1 August), 65 attendees, including government officials and cooperative union representatives, exchanged on complementary approaches. The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) reported that 30% of Kenya’s coffee plots have already been detected through satellite imagery and would be verified in a nationwide survey with Kobo Collect, an effort by a Multi-Agency Working Group spearheaded by the Kenyan Agriculture and Food Administration (AFA), to map all remaining coffee plots in Kenya. 

Stakeholders discussed complementarities: while remote sensing offers broad coverage, shaded coffee and very small plots reinforce the need for in-field geolocation. Interest emerged in designing a standardized, national Ground survey, aligned with the ongoing Kobo Collect efforts. 

Looking ahead: capacity development and systems integration

To sustain momentum, FAO identified two in-country consultants, selected for their strong technical leadership during the training. They will support coffee cooperatives through additional capacity development, guide geolocation campaigns, and engage in high-level discussions to align national mapping and traceability initiatives.  

These efforts reaffirm Kenya’s commitment to strengthening its traceability systems and demonstrate the potential of DPI as a public good for sustainable trade and land management. AIM4Commodities will continue to work with national and local partners to build capacity, improve data availability, and support compliance with deforestation-free supply chains, paving the way for a more transparent and sustainable coffee sector in Kenya. 

More on this topic

• AIM4Commodities initiative  
• AIM4Forests programme
• Enhancing compliance with deforestation-free regulations and enabling local participation with Ground: insights from user experiences in Ivory Coast 
• Strengthening Traceability and Sustainability in Viet Nam’s Coffee and Rubber Sectors  

This story was originally published here.