NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 15 – Agri-business firm Kakuzi has been asked to explore carbon market opportunities to enable it to engage in sustainable community projects that will reduce poverty and achieve meaningful development.

This comes after the recent signing of the Climate Change Amendment Act of 2023.

State Department for Environment and Climate Change Permanent Secretary Festus Ng’eno, in a speech read by the Ministry’s Secretary of Administration John Elungata, said that the government continues to strengthen partnerships by providing policies and legal regulatory reforms.

“If we are to achieve a sustainable future, accelerating towards a low carbon world needs people with a purpose, as outlined in the Kakuzi ESG report,” he said.

“This report embodies a vision that exceeds financial consideration and brings to bear the fact that businesses can serve as catalysts for positive growth.”

Elungata spoke during the release of Kakuzi, an agri-business firm, annual Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report in Nairobi today.

“Since 2017, we have scientifically tracked and measured our carbon footprint and published this as part of our annual ESG report,” Kakuzi PLC Managing Director Chris Flowers said.

“We support environmental sustainability and biodiversity and continue to identify the environmental impacts of all our activities and minimise and mitigate these responsibly,” Flowers added.

“We achieve this by complying with all environmental legislation, assessing the main environmental impacts of our business activities, establishing programmes to minimise environmental impacts, and providing appropriate training to our employees.”

One of Kakuzi’s significant highlights in 2022 was becoming the first commercial exporter of African-grown avocados to China with nine containers of quality export-grade avocados.

China’s exports totaled 527 avocado fruit containers of about 11.4 million kilograms exported to Europe and China during the year.

Kakuzi also established an Avocado Academy, which trains farmers to increase their knowledge base in avocado production.

Using social media, the Academy trains farmers in Kenya and other countries who incorporate the critical learnings on their farms to improve their avocado yields.

The training is done through platforms such as YouTube, using short topical videos to upskill their avocado knowledge.

Farmers are taught best practices that explain topics ranging from seedling and harvest stages to export using easy-to-digest content.

The Academy also uses Facebook to send texts, which is instrumental in capacity-building.