The Future of Smallholder Farming in Eastern Africa - Uganda ...

eturns—can be related to many factors but are always influenced by social capital 9 . This is
defined as civic social networks (Coleman 1988) 10 .
The importance of social capital has long been recognized. In fact, the dominant
theme in most development plans in Kenya has been “participation for progress” (GoK,
1989). In the Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 on African socialism and its application to
planning in Kenya (GoK 1965), the government underscores the use of the Harambee spirit,
whereby pooling of resources is seen as an important vehicle toward the mobilization of both
private and public resources to foster development. Harambee is Kenya’s unique self-help
movement, which has operated concurrently with official programs since independence.
Resources pooled often include money, labor, materials, professional services, and
organizational skills to build schools, roads, dispensaries, and cattle dips, among others.
Rural communities may be endowed with land, but they often lack skills (human
capital) and organization (social capital) to turn the land into physical assets and protect it
from degradation. Essentially, social capital influences the capacity of rural communities to
organize for development. It also helps groups come together to raise their common concerns
with the state and the private sector. In relation to the construction of terraces, social capital
can increase access to knowledge and facilitate perception of the soil conservation problem
and the need to do something about it; influence motivation for soil conservation work, peer
encouragement, and labor exchange; and improve access to external inputs, including the
state and civic society, beyond the immediate neighborhood. Directly, social capital affects
soil conservation through information, motivation, labor, provision of tools, and terrace
layout. Indirectly, it is through increased income for investment and peer encouragement to
invest.
Although the on-going market reforms in Kenya aim to increase agricultural incomes,
their effects seem at best to be mixed. Yet government policies are known to have
considerable influence on the practices used by farmers, either encouraging or hindering
investment in sound land improvement strategies. Institutional reforms, with regard to social
capital and the imperfect functioning of the land market, are therefore receiving increasing
attention as complementary policy devices for the improvement of farming systems. This is
considered important especially within the framework of the ongoing policy debate on
suitable incentives for improving sustainable land use systems and practices.
9 Technical and financial aspects are usually given overriding importance in soil conservation and land use
management plans. However, it is recognized that social and institutional factors also matter (Krishna and
Uphoff 1999).
10 Social capital is also defined as tacit knowledge, a collection of networks, an aggregation of reputations, and
organizational capital, which can be interpreted in the context of organizational theory as a social means of
coping with moral hazard and incentive problems (Stiglitz 1999).