Automating the Seed Certification Process in Kenya
The Challenge
The agriculture sector is the backbone of Kenya's economy, contributing around 26% to the GDP and 65% of total export earnings. With the increasing pressure of a growing population on limited land resources, ensuring high agricultural productivity has become crucial. One way to achieve this is by providing high-quality seeds to farmers, a process overseen by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS).
However, KEPHIS faced several challenges in executing the stringent seed certification process manually, including lengthy application processing times, lack of traceability and monitoring mechanisms, absence of accurate market data, and limited accessibility for stakeholders.
The Solution
To address these pain points, CSM Technologies, a pioneering GovTech organization, implemented the Seed Certification and Plant Variety Protection System (SC-PVP) – an end-to-end solution for automating the seed certification process.
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The SC-PVP system is a unified database management application that centrally manages and coordinates the entire seed export and import process. It comprises modules for seed certification, seed grower management, seed merchant operations, plant variety testing and protection, seed seller management, seed testing, and finance.
The Impact
This comprehensive solution has significantly reduced transaction times and costs, increased real-time accessibility to essential information, ensured secure processing of documents and data, and facilitated greater accessibility and availability of information for stakeholders. Furthermore, it has streamlined the process through online applications, submissions, and payments, while providing valuable data analytics support.
The system had over 2,000 users accessing it daily during peak seasons and 500-700 users on regular days, spanning 6 regions, 47 counties, 300 sub-counties, 2,000 wards, 800-1,000 companies, 10,000 growers, and 1,000 sellers.
Through the SC-PVP system, CSM Technologies has played a pivotal role in enhancing Kenya's agricultural productivity and export income by ensuring the sustainability of high-quality seed supply and facilitating a transparent and efficient seed certification process.