More than 600 families in Chakama, Kilifi county, have benefitted from a Sh34 million irrigation project.
The project was funded by the Coast Development Authority.
Coast Regional commissioner John Elungata, who commissioned the project, said the aim is to enable residents to produce enough food so they can stop relying on relief food.
"This will enable us to feed our people. It's not always about giving relief food, we give it only as a stopgap but in the long term the only remedy is to ensure our people produce food," he said.
CDA managing director Mohamed Keinan said they have supported three schemes – Gava, Kibora and Kanduru – in Chakama irrigation, covering 800 acres.
He said in every scheme, CDA developed demonstration plots to teach farmers how to do agribusiness.
"Most of the time you have seen residents of Chakama having challenges accessing food, which prompted us to come up with an irrigation scheme to address this problem," Keinan said.
Chakama irrigation project chairman Solomon Bashiri thanked CDA for funding the irrigation project.
"This project has really helped the community as they could not pump water from the river which is a long-distance away," he said.
