Moving from a working prototype to national-scale infrastructure is a three-phase journey. Each phase has a clear goal, a defined investment requirement, and measurable outcomes.
A prototype demonstrates feasibility. Scaling it to serve thousands of smallholder farms across Kenya's major export counties requires coordinated investment across three distinct phases — each building on the one before, and each producing independent value even if subsequent phases are delayed.
Ph.1
Field pilot — 3 to 6 cooperatives
Deploy TRACE with 3–6 cooperatives across Kirinyaga, Murang'a, and Nyeri counties. Test with real farm data and one live EU-bound shipment per cooperative. Refine the system based on real-world friction. Produce the first genuine Digital Product Passports. Estimated: 12 months, Ksh 8–15M depending on scope.
Ph.2
Regulatory integration and standards alignment
Work with KEPHIS, KEBS, and the Export Promotion Council to align TRACE data schemas with national certification systems. Integrate with Kenya's existing phytosanitary certificate workflow so TRACE DPPs are recognised alongside — and eventually replace — paper certificates. This phase requires government partnership and policy support.
Ph.3
Open-source national platform
Release the full TRACE codebase as open-source infrastructure that any Kenyan exporter, cooperative, or county government can deploy independently. Establish a maintenance and governance body — likely hosted within NACOSTI or NRF — to ensure the system evolves with EU regulatory requirements.
The key design principle across all three phases is that TRACE should never become a proprietary dependency. It must remain free to use and open to inspection — both because this is the right approach for a national public good, and because it is the only way smallholder cooperatives can afford to participate.
Funding for Phase 1 is the critical unlock. The research team has the technical capability and the research partnership to execute the pilot. What is needed is the financial support to deploy sensors, compensate partner farmers for their time, and cover the costs of a full field evaluation.
For NRF and bilateral research funders
Phase 1 is an ideal candidate for a National Research Fund applied research grant or a bilateral development-research partnership (e.g. with DFID, GIZ, or the EU's own Horizon Africa programme). The research outputs — field-tested methodology, open-source codebase, and published findings — meet the publication and impact requirements of all three funding streams.