County leaders, including members of the County Executive Committee, county officers, the heads of the county ministries and departments and representatives of the civil society took part in the forums of four days’ duration in Eldoret. The workshop aimed at providing a platform for county leaders to dialogue on the topic of resilience building with regard to food security. The discussions were based on the “Ending Drought Emergencies (EDE) Framework”. EDE is built on the premise that the impact caused by droughts can be managed to reduce their worst effects on communities through creating an environment that allows for building of drought resilience.

The dialogue forums were designed around six pillars of EDE, namely Human and Peace Security, Livelihood Development, Human Capital Development, Infrastructure Development, Institutional Development and Knowledge Management, Disaster Risk Management and Coordination. From these discussions, participants identified challenges that have rendered them susceptible to drought in the past. These are for example poor agricultural practices, semi-literacy, limited extension services support and nomadic pastoralism. In both counties, agricultural practice is viewed as subsistent and secondary to pastoralism. Furthermore, there is little or no employment of technological farming input to increase and improve the quality of output from the farms. Subsequently, productivity has remained low – and so has the motivation of potential farmers. The leaders challenged each other to promote commercial farming methods among their communities and support projects that increase their individual and collective wealth.

One of the main outcomes of the forums was the need to strengthen County Development Strategies. Towards this end, both counties identified the need to revise their Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) to include well defined goals with clear pathways in order to achieve those goals. It was observed that the existing plans were either developed hastily or with little insight into the specific needs and resources in the counties ahead of implementation of the devolved structures as provided in the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. The forums also helped the county leaders to recognize the importance of developing structures for information sharing to ensure the best coordination of their various activities for the maximum impact of their efforts.