Nkubu Icons Investment Ltd has leased a 25-acre farm located approximately 5 km off
the main Mombasa-Nairobi Highway. It is to the East of Emali Market off Emali-Wote
road. The area is suitable for production of Dorper sheep. The task was advertised. FFD
expressed interest and won the bid. The Investment Company, Nkubu Icons Investment
Ltd sought technical consultancy services from Future Focus Development and Commissioned FFD to carry out this assignment. From our pool of experts, some with over 30 years’ of consultancy experience in agriculture and livestock related value chains we
deployed 2 senior experts with relevant experience.

The study was to provide technical advice on the suitability of sheep farming enterprise to facilitate an informed decision-making process by the board: Whether venture into Mutton Production or Breeding. The consultants made a visit to the farm. At the time of the visit, the farm had a total of 31 heads of sheep that were in poor health condition; some due to age, inbreeding and poor nutrition. This farm has well-drained soils which seems to have been exhausted through farming activities over many years. It has a river frontage, a long Muhooni River. The Nkubu Icons Investment Ltd commissioned FFD to provide a) A comprehensive inventory report on the current status of the farm; b) A report incorporating  recommendations on improvements/optimizations in all areas captured in the Scope of Work; c) Cost estimates of implementing the recommendations/improvements highlighted.

Irigiro Mofarm organic fresh avocado producer group was registered in July 2017.The group is located in Muthithi ward in Kigumo sub-county of Muranga County, Kenya. The group has 90 registered members where 47 are male and 43 female. Only 5 of the members are youth.It is estimated that each member has on average between 10-20 plants of avocado (this comes close to a total of 180-1800 plants).

Keziah Wangechi was so excited to have been among the few farmers who had qualified to receive a certificate of participation in the livestock improvement program of the Kenya Dairy sector competitiveness program (KDSCP). In her late thirties, Keziah is a mother of four; 2 boys and 2 girls. The first born son is in secondary school (form two) while the rest are in primary school. She has a secondary education. Her husband works as a teacher in a nearby centre to supplement the family income from the cows. The family has 12 acres of land and keeps 4 mature cows and 4 heifers. As a member of Miharati Farmers cooperative society in Central Kenya, she was not satisfied with the level of production of her cows: 6 litres of milk on average from 3 cows. This made an income of Ksh.13, 000(US$ 153) per month.

“Listening to Mary Gichuki referring to the different botanical names of the fodder trees on her compound, one would mistake her for an agricultural Extension office…” This was a confession from Dr Sigh, a research officer and a lecturer from India–University of New Delhi. He made this statement during a recent visit by international delegates who visited the family ‘s “Bamato” farm in November 2011.The team of 38 delegates (from Africa, USA, Latin America Europe and India) were part of a team of about 400 participants of a conference on Technology transfer in Nairobi.

Mary’s farm was one of those that had qualified to be visited for she had made a breakthrough in one of the Key areas many small scale dairy farmers had failed: the farm is a success story of its own kind in terms of integrating fodder production and crop production systems.

Project Background

National Agricultural Rural Inclusive Growth Project {NARIGP} is implemented in 22 Counties in Kenya. Future Focus Development {FFD} was identified as the Private Service Provider to implement the Dairy Value Chain in Trans-Nzoia County. The other three Value chains are Bananas, Tomatoes and Local Chicken.

Isiolo County is one of the 47 counties in Kenya located in the North Eastern region of the country. Kenya’s camel population stands at of 2,970,911 and according to the information received by the consultant from the LMS office in Isiolo, camel milk is considered the County’s “white gold” since majority of the households in the County depends on the camel for their food security during the droughts, incomes and livelihoods. Most of Isiolo County’s camels are concentrated in three main administrative wards, viz. Isiolo, Merti and Garba Tulla.

The Kenya Livestock Market Systems (LMS) Activity is USAID funded in 5 Kenyan ASAL Counties {Viz Garissa, Wajir, Isiolo, Marsabit and Turkana}. It seeks to strengthen people’s resilience in Northern Kenya and reduce poverty, hunger and undernutrition. This will be achieved through ‘expanding and diversifying viable economic opportunities’ and ‘strengthening the community capacities for resilience and growth’

The applicants are 48 (42F, 6M) members from three women milk marketing groups. These are Adhesi Self Help Group, Kulamawe dairy women group and Kinna women group, all from Garba Tulla ward. These business groups have been in the camel milk business for close to ten years. They have faced challenges such as milk wastage as a result of poor milk handling, spoilage due to use of plastic containers that are difficult to clean, exploitation by milk brokers, poor milk prices, lack of a united voice by farmers to lobby and advocate for better milk prices among others. Our objective is to come together and form a dairy marketing cooperative that plans to add value to our milk by pasteurizing it at Classic Foods Ltd  and other processors and making part of it into yoghurt (on pilot basis). As such, our business will take a cooperative model. The cooperative will be run by a board of management (7 members) and also a supervisory board (3 members-one from each group). Women, men and youth will be represented at all leadership positions.

These value added quality products will be sold to camel milk holding ground in bulk from the mini-dairy plant over 90 km away. We plan to transport our products in bulk by imported special refrigerated aluminium milk cans (with an insulator) in order to control microbial multiplications. Specifically two business partners have shown interest in procuring our pasteurized camel milk. One is Classic foods Ltd in Isiolo who is currently expanding his capacity to also handle cow and goats milk. The other partner is a camel milk processor in Nanyuki. Ngamia Milk suppliers. These partners willing to enter into an agreement with us on condition that they are assured of quality. Other potential buyers are Anolei, Afro Natural and Tawakal in Isiolo. However, other willing buyers will be free to purchase our products from our Kulamawe mini-dairy plant should this be the agreement. We project that we will also target other markets in Isiolo town by supplying to boda boda youth operators and businesspersons who will make supplies to their already established customer base such as institutions and individual customers. We will in the long run target other possible market outlets in Nairobi and other towns in the country. To achieve our dream we propose to mobilize resources and carry out some of the following activities: drilling a borehole and install a solar system, put up a mini dairy plant at Kulamawe Centre, install a cooler and refrigeration and pasteurizing equipment, purchase mezzican food grade calibrated plastic milk containers and yoghurt making.

In this project, we plan to collaborate with another local development partner in Isiolo, Lay Volunteers International Association (LVIA) from Italy, and ACDI/VOCA for financial assistance. LVIA however, has received some funding from DFID.

The total project budget is kshs12, 745,000M.  We request ACDI/VOCA to contribute a total of kshs6, 865,000M while LVIA and the community (cooperative members from the 3 SHGs) will meet the project balance of kshs5, 880,000M. This money will go towards the establishment of a mini dairy plant including installation of solar panels, purchase of milk equipment that includes, batch pasteurizer, cooler tanks, solar invertors, Milk pumps, Milk analysers, refrigerators and 200 Milk Mezzi cans.

Meet Fiona Dacha a women Domestic worker from Korogocho who is a beneficiary of WEZESHA Jamii project. She is a member of rainbow women group.

The group members have participated in the capacity building training and practical sessions which she says have changed their lives. She confesses, “When I heard about the program, I had mixed feelings. At first I thought it was a waste of time to attend the capacity building sessions at the expense of going to hunt for my usual general domestic work”.

This is how she earns her living, cleaning compounds, washing clothes, polishing shoes, washing dishes, cooking and other domestic chores. But after attending the capacity building sessions, things are now different.

SITE Wezesha Jamii was a 4-year {2015-2018} is a capacity building project that was implemented by SITE EP,  Oxfam GB, Youth with Action Kenya {YAK} and National Organization for Peer Educators (NOPE) with  funding from the European Union {EU}. The project targeted 10,000 women domestic workers (WDWs) and  20,000 women small scale traders (WSSTs) in 5 urban informal settlements/slums of Nairobi city. They includes;  Kibra {line7 and Library}, Mukuru {kwa Rueben and Kayaba}, Kawangware, Mathare {Mashimoni and Mulango  Kubwa} and Korogocho and Ngomongo.