This archive report was first published on 2 October 2019.
Kenya is facing a growing concern over the safety of its food supply chain. Cases of lifetime diseases attributed to fraudulent traders and producers have become rampant, forcing families to spend heavily on curative medicine and management of lifelong diseases.
However, there is a breakthrough in the form of blockchain technology, which offers transparency on the food chain. This technology allows foodstuffs such as fruits and vegetables to be traced from the point of production to the end-users, ensuring that every transaction is secured with a digital signature that proves its authenticity.
Blockchain technology has restored confidence and trust in buyers, allowing them to make informed decisions about the products they consume. It also helps to eliminate fake products along the agriculture supply chain of food and brings accountability from the current food safety dilemma.
At the product creation stage, blockchain actors unearth information on farming certification, factory records, and other hidden data in stages of production. This data is verifiable, reliable, and trustworthy, allowing consumers to make informed decisions.
For example, a poultry farmer needs to disclose where the chicks are reared, the environment in which they are kept, the feed that they are given, and the date of slaughter. This information is stored in a blockchain, which cannot be changed without approval from other players in the chain.
With blockchain technology, a consumer in Europe can tell which kind of pesticide the animal was given, when it was slaughtered, how it was shipped, its age at slaughter time, and so on. This level of transparency has restored trust in the food supply chain and has encouraged farmers to subscribe to a code of ethics.
There are already success stories in Kenya on traceability, such as the Farmforce website developed by Syngenta Foundation that integrates smallholder farmers with outgrowers for export market access. However, the technology cannot be effective without political goodwill and acceptance of the private sector and the public, who are the main actors in the food value chain.
Mr. Njoroge, an innovator working at Mount Kenya University, is a winner of the Global Innovation through Science and Technology 2019 Award. He believes that blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the food supply chain in Kenya and beyond.
