Kenya
Global Communities advances health, resilience, and opportunity across Kenya by combining community-driven solutions with decades of global health expertise.
Current Programs
AfriScout: The Shepherd’s Eye in the Sky
AfriScout is revolutionizing how pastoralists in Africa find pasture and water for their animals using the power of satellite and mobile technology. Developed by Global Communities, the AfriScout mobile app provides pastoralists with current information on water and vegetation conditions using localized community grazing maps.
This data helps them make more accurate and cost-effective migration decisions, improve pasture management, and reduce the risk of herd loss. The app was launched in Kenya in 2018. AfriScout has mapped 59 million hectares of rangelands in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania and has over 45,000 registered accounts that support more than 300,000 households.
Previous Programs
From Policy to Practice: Strengthening Kenya's Cooperatives and Creating Opportunities for Youth
From 2023 to 2025, Global Communities' Cooperative Leadership, Engagement, Advocacy and Research (CLEAR+) project, funded by USAID’s Cooperative Development Program, advanced cooperative development in Kenya with a focus on youth employment.
CLEAR+ supported policy reforms, strengthened business strategies through local service providers, and promoted gender equality, youth engagement, and effective governance to ensure worker cooperatives were democratic, inclusive, and resilient. The project also partnered with training institutions to increase awareness of the worker cooperative model.
Working with 20 county governments, CLEAR+ developed enabling policies aligned with the national cooperative bill and offered technical guidance to support the registration and management of new worker cooperatives.
Using a market systems approach, the project strengthened the capacity and viability of worker cooperatives in sectors such as tourism, engineering, and juakali (“informal sector” in Swahili) through business planning, marketing, and coaching. This approach empowered businesses to engage with cooperatives as clients, driving positive development outcomes through market-driven solutions. (Completed in 2025)
Protecting Herds Against Shocks and Stresses with Mobile-Based Insurance
To help Kenyan pastoralists sustainably improve and protect their assets, Global Communities partnered with Takaful Insurance of Africa Limited to sell index-based livestock insurance bundled with the AfriScout mobile application.
Takaful’s Sharia-compliant insurance product — Index-Based Livestock Takaful (IBLT) — used predefined drought conditions to trigger automatic payments for pastoralists at risk, preventing negative coping strategies that often compromise pastoralists and herds. When the index pays out to policyholders, payments are delivered via mobile money, which they can use to purchase fodder and water, or to cover costs for more distant scouting and grazing.
Rather than replacing an animal after it dies, payouts allow pastoralists to keep their herds healthy, even in times of drought-related shocks and stresses. Bundled with AfriScout’s custom-tailored grazing maps to help pastoralists more precisely and cost-effectively plan migration, this partnership combines mobile technology with traditional knowledge to strengthen the pastoral system, proactively address risks, and increase resilience to shocks and stresses.
To date, over 3,600 IBLT policies have been purchased by pastoralists, with over 1,100 bundled with the AfriScout mobile app. (Completed in 2025)
Improving Primary Health Care in Kenya Through Stronger Health Workforce Leadership
This 12-month initiative of the Global Health Workforce Programme, funded by the UK Department of Health and Social Care through the Tropical Health and Education Fund, was designed to help Kenya’s health system and workforce recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and advance progress toward universal health coverage and primary health care.
In partnership with Primary Care International and Strathmore University Business School, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Council of Governors, IntraHealth International strengthened the leadership, management, and governance skills of county-level health managers to improve service delivery, boost health worker productivity, and enhance retention and representation.
Through a modular training program paired with coaching and mentorship, 63 health managers from 10 counties completed the course, improving the functionality of primary care networks across Kenya. To ensure lasting impact, the project also developed an online version of the training curriculum to expand access for future participants. (Completed in 2025)
Building Kenya's Capacity to Train and Support Advanced Practice Nurses for Specialized Care
Led by IntraHealth International in collaboration with the Nursing Council of Kenya, the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana, and Ideal Health Organization, this 12-month project (2024-2025) supported Kenya's Ministry of Health in assessing the state of Advanced Practice Nursing (APN) education and practice and exploring its potential to expand access to quality, specialized care across all levels of the health system.
Funded by the UK Department of Health and Social Care through the Tropical Health and Education Fund, this Global Health Workforce Programme initiative included a knowledge exchange with Ghana, where the APN cadre has already been successfully implemented. The project helped Kenya's Ministry of Health design clinical leadership training to strengthen specialist and APN roles and conducted a readiness assessment across eight national institutions, seven counties, eight clinical practicum sites, and six medical training institutions.
Findings validated through a national stakeholder meeting informed a strategy, action plan, and recommendations for scaling up APN training and practice in Kenya. (Completed in 2025)
Transforming Work and Economic Opportunity Through Kenya's Cooperative Movement
From 2018 to 2024, Global Communities implemented the Cooperative Leadership, Engagement, Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) program, funded by USAID, to help worker cooperatives strengthen their business identity, improve performance, and remain competitive in a changing market.
CLEAR advanced youth and women's economic empowerment by creating opportunities in the service industry. Among its successes were the Women in Sustainable Energy and Entrepreneurship (WISEe) cooperative — founded by women engineers who install solar panels — and Funditech, a worker cooperative for certified builders and construction trade workers.
As Kenya’s national government began transferring cooperative policy authority to counties, Global Communities played a pivotal role by training both county and national officials in public policy-making and progressive cooperative policies.
The program also brought together key stakeholders — including Kenyan cooperatives, government agencies, NGOs, local universities, unions, and apex organizations — to shape a new cooperative law and national policy aligned with Kenya’s constitution. (Completed in 2024)
IntraHealth past programs (selected)
- Promoting the Quality of Medicines Plus (PQM+) (USAID), 2020-2025
- Global Health Supply Chain-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) (USAID), 2016-2025
- Accelerating Support to Advanced Local Partners (ASAP) (USAID), 2019-2022
- Enhancing mHero for Better Health Worker Communications (Johnson & Johnson), 2020-2022
- Human Resources for Health (HRH) Kenya (USAID), 2016-2021
- mHero Health Worker Health Snapshot (Digital Square/Goldsmith Foundation), 2020
- FunzoKenya (USAID), 2012-2017
- HRH Capacity Bridge (USAID), 2014-2016
- Capacity Kenya (USAID), 2009-2014
- CapacityPlus (USAID), 2009-2015
Impact
4,000+
cooperative members benefiting
from services and resources delivered through
CLEAR-supported cooperatives
42,000+
health professional students
given school loans
15,400+
health workers trained on
HIV, RMNCAH, and more
Resources
Targeting individuals or communities? Learnings from AfriScout on improving pastoralists’ well-being
CLEAR Cooperative Resilience Research
Cooperative Resilience Longitudinal Study in Kenya
Cooperative Development (CLEAR+) Program Project Brief
The USAID Cooperative Development Program CLEAR Learning Agenda Summary
Cooperative Businesses: A Training Guide for Cooperatives & Developers
Case Study: Meru Central Coffee Cooperative Union’s (MCCCUs) Business Development Journey with Global Communities in Kenya
Case Study: Limuru Dairy Farmers Cooperative Business Development Partnership with Global Communities in Kenya
Learning Brief: Insights Gained from USAID Cooperative Development Program – CLEAR: Assessing the Impact of Women’s Engagement in Cooperatives
News
Margaret Odera: Championing Community Health Workers in Kenya
Health workers are the heart of global health security, playing a crucial role in preventing and responding to pandemics, as well as addressing growing threats of other infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and maternal and child health challenges. In honor of World Health Worker Week, meet Margaret Odera of Kenya, a devoted community health worker…
Women-Founded Cooperative Leads Solar Energy Innovation in Kenya
By Maryangela Amendola One phone call changed Jacinta’s future. In 2015, a college friend told her about a renewable solar energy training program provided by Arizona University and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She left her career as an engineer and aviation teacher in Mombasa County, Kenya, to pursue the…
Strengthening Economic Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs through Cooperatives
By Ashley Holst Cooperatives are leaders in promoting inclusive economic growth by providing equitable and accessible solutions to economic and social stressors. Two of the seven principles of cooperatives are “voluntary and open membership” and “concern for community,” both of which call upon cooperatives to create opportunities for all people and to put the betterment…