From policy ambition to scaled impact: assessing Kenya’s climate adaptation and mitigation frameworks for innovation uptake

Ires, Idil

From policy ambition to scaled impact: assessing Kenya’s climate adaptation and mitigation frameworks for innovation uptake

Autores

Ires, Idil

Editor

International Water Management Institute
CGIAR Scaling for Impact Program

Descripción

This report assesses whether Kenya’s extensive climate adaptation and mitigation policy landscape is effectively enabling the scaling of innovations across food, land, and water systems. Kenya has developed one of Africa’s most comprehensive climate governance frameworks, underpinned by the Climate Change Act (2016), successive National Climate Change Action Plans, and a wide range of sectoral and devolved policies. Despite this strong policy ambition, climate variability continues to undermine agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods, revealing a persistent gap between policy design and scaled impact. The analysis, conducted under Area of Work 1 of CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact (S4I) initiative, combines a review of over 100 national and county-level policies and programs with insights from a multi-stakeholder validation workshop. Focusing on the Climate Adaptation and Mitigation cluster, the study finds that while policy alignment and political commitment are generally strong, implementation is constrained by fragmented institutional mandates, weak coordination across sectors and levels of government, unpredictable financing—particularly at county level—and limited technical and monitoring capacity. The report concludes that Kenya’s enabling environment is partially supportive but insufficient for systemic scaling. It recommends strengthening cross-ministerial coordination, securing predictable climate finance, investing in county-level capacity, harmonizing monitoring and climate information systems, and building structured public–private partnerships to accelerate innovation uptake and deliver resilient, inclusive growth.