Kenya: Terms of Reference for the end of project evaluation of the ECCRAS Project

Aug 20, 2025 (Deadline: 2025-08-28)
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Project description
The project Enhancing Climate Change Resilience and Adaption Among Smallholder Farmers (ECCRAS) in Western Kenya financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry, Climate and Environmental Protection, Regions and Water Management (BMLUK) is implemented by a consortium consisting of Austrian organization Sei So Frei Salzburg (SSF Salzburg) and Development Education Services for Community Empowerment (DESECE) between 01.07.2021 and 31.12.2025. The project was initially planned for a duration of 4 years, but has been extended to last until 31st December 2025. The overall objective of the project is to enhance the adaptive capacity and climate resilience of smallholder farmers. In the extension period, a specific objective has been added, aiming at the distribution of fuel efficient cookstoves and empowering single mothers and increasing school retention of girls. The project takes an integrated approach, combining agroecology-based climate-resilient agriculture with human rights and conflict resolution.

Project Context
Climate change is increasingly impacting Kenya through rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and more frequent droughts. As the country’s economy depends heavily on rain-fed agriculture—mainly practised by smallholder farmers who make up 70–80% of all farmers—these changes have serious consequences. In Western Kenya, agricultural production systems are particularly vulnerable. Adaptive capacity remains low due to widespread poverty, gender inequality, and pressure on already degraded and overused natural resources, especially land. These pressures contribute to local conflicts and are compounded by a general lack of climate change awareness. As a result, ecosystem services, biodiversity, livelihoods, and food security are under threat.

Population growth in the region has led to further land fragmentation, with small farms averaging just 0.3 hectares, and larger ones around 3 hectares. Unsustainable practices, soil erosion, pollution, shifting rainfall patterns, and high temperatures have caused severe land degradation. These challenges are worsened by high input costs, poor market systems and infrastructure, deforestation in wetland areas, poor waste disposal, and mismanaged cooperatives, all contributing to low agricultural productivity.

Structural conflict and violence persist, often rooted in the unequal distribution of scarce resources like land, which are withheld based on ethnicity or kinship. While there has been some progress in women’s leadership in Bungoma and Trans Nzoia, women, youth, and children still face exclusion from key decision-making and control over productive resources. Patriarchal traditions, reinforced by discriminatory laws and customs, continue to limit women’s and youth’s access to land and economic opportunities, weakening their ability to adapt to climate change. For women in particular, gaining land access, learning agroecology, and becoming independent farmers and leaders remains extremely difficult. However, agroecology offers opportunities for solidarity, livelihoods, and empowerment, enabling women to challenge unjust practices and participate more actively in political and community life.