The Smallholder Irrigation Program Mount Kenya Region (SIPMK) aims to increase household incomes of smallholder farmers through the introduction of intensive irrigated farming. SPIMK is designed as an “open pro­gramme”: The irrigation schemes are selected on the basis of well-defined technical, social, financial and institutional criteria. The project provides support for the implementation of new irrigation schemes and related extension services and offers credit facilities to farmer groups organised in legal entities. For this purpose, the German Govern­ment provides loan funds which are on-lent through the Kenyan Ministry of Finance to the participating private Kenyan banks.

Participating farmers are required to organise themselves in farmer cooperatives. This is a prerequisite before submission of a request for scheme implementation to the Programme Management Unit (PMU). Once the request has been approved according to predefined selection criteria, each beneficiary of the proposed irrigation scheme has to pay a credit security of up to 10% of his loan as part of his total contribution (farmers contribute 50% to the total investment costs of the irrigation system). Only then the irrigation systems will be designed, tendered and constructed.