Overview
Kenya’s coast sits at the centre of the country’s blue economy ambitions, and the opportunities for climate-smart coastal enterprise are as varied as the ecosystems they draw on.
Climate-Smart Coastal Enterprises: Opportunities for Kenya's Blue Economy
The African Union’s Agenda 2063 commits the continent, under Goal 7, to environmentally sustainable, climate-resilient economies and a sustainable blue economy. On Kenya’s coast, that ambition takes concrete, local forms.
blue economy
Categories of Opportunity:
- Climate-Smart Cash Crops
Coastal agronomy expertise, such as KALRO’s coconut, cashewnut and sisal research in Kilifi, underpins climate-smart cash-crop production.
- Nature-Based Enterprise
Mangrove nurseries, beekeeping around restored forest and mangrove sites, and community-led tourism such as the mangrove walks already operating around Kilifi’s Mida Creek each draw directly on a healthy coastal or catchment ecosystem.
- A Delayed Loss
An enterprise that degrades the ecosystem it depends on is not a long-term opportunity, it is a delayed loss.
- Cash Crop Trainers Programme
This is the same principle behind Twende’s Coastal Enterprise & Cash Crop Trainers Programme: training that builds livelihoods and ecological resilience together, not one at the expense of the other.
