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    AbdullahiDriven by their childhood experience of nomadic lifestyle where they witnessed their parents lose livestock to drought and lack of drugs and vaccines, two young entrepreneurs from Wajir County are now leveraging on technology to provide market and veterinary services to smallholder pastoralists in rural Kenya.

    Driven by their childhood experience of nomadic lifestyle where they witnessed their parents lose livestock to drought and lack of drugs and vaccines, two young entrepreneurs from Wajir County are now leveraging on technology to provide market and veterinary services to smallholder pastoralists in rural Kenya.

    Fed up with the situation, Ibrahim Ahmed, 28, and Abdirahman Abdullahi, 27, in 2018 started doing some research on how they could come up with a solution, which birthed Geljir Technologies Limited, a social enterprise firm that they founded in April 2019 to engineer innovative solutions in the livestock sector in sub-saharan Africa.

    RELATED CONTENT: Agri-Entrepreneur: How I have used technology to connect 7,000 Kenya smallholder farmers to global markets

    “Our plan was aimed at improving the lives of pastoral communities in Kenya and Africa by using modern technology to solve their challenges, hence we did not just want to make profit so we came up with a social enterprise that is driven by impact,” said Ibrahim Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Geljir Technologies.

    The new business then set about creating an end-to-end digital platform to connect smallholder pastoralists in rural areas to the livestock buyers and meat processing companies locally and internationally and present a convenient and reliable alternative to the current livestock value chain that was inefficient, risky and expensive.

    Three months ago the duo launched M-nomad, a livestock marketplace web platform as their first product to the market.

    The idea was to test the market with urban pastoralists and livestock traders who have access to the internet before developing other technologies and to their amazement the feedback was incredibly positive.

    “We are following this with a USSD and SMS platform where we want to reach the rural pastoralists who use feature phones and have no internet access,” said Ahmed.

    How M-nomad works

    Once on m-nomad.co.ke, a seller (animal owner) is required to click sell, fill the product information and set the price of the product, which in this case is the livestock to be sold.

    Geljir team then moves promptly to verify the seller’s information and the seller is included in the system upon qualification.

    As a buyer, the user is required to fill the information of the desired product from the categories provided of which the company’s cloud-based system matches the buyer with his or her preference.

    Users (seller and the buyer) are then allowed to engage in a transparent and free marketplace where the seller closes deal faster and buyer matched with reliable supply.

    When all is done, Geljir through M-nomad facilitates the logistics and delivery which has been a problem in livestock marketing, and cuts a commission before paying the seller within 48 hours of the sale through their phone.

    This eliminates the middlemen who by connecting smallholder pastoralists as livestock producers directly to bulk buyers and meat processing companies, and thus eliminating costs in the selling chain – seeing smallholders get better prices, and buyers benefiting from better prices too.

    Users can access the responsive web platform through www.m-nomad.co.ke on their phone or desktop.

    “In this,” said Ahmed, “M-nomad uses technology to solve farmers/pastoralists problems by firstly giving them access to all markets where there is huge demand for live animals by various buyers who have been unable to reach the rural smallholder pastoralists.”

    RELATED CONTENT: New technology to help farmers raise hardier and more productive animals developed

    According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics’ Economic Survey 2019, the value of marketed livestock and livestock products increased by 8.3 per cent to Sh146.8 billion in 2018, a clear indication that there is huge demand for livestock and livestock products.

    M-nomad is also enabling pastoralists to access quality inputs, vaccines and veterinary services through a franchise model being put in place by the company. This reduces livestock disease and mortality rate and enable them to run sustainable livestock operations.

    The producers also get alerts on weather, prices and animal husbandry through their phone for free, via sms, and they can notify stakeholders of any disease outbreak to trigger a quick response mechanism.

    Currently, the company is working with women livestock groups in Wajir and Isiolo and working to engage with groups from other counties in the arid and semi-arid lands. “Our goal is to empower women and integrate them into the livestock value chain,” said Abdirahman Abdullahi Co-founder, Director of Innovation and Business Development.

    The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that about 60 per cent of the livestock population is found in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) where the industry employs nearly 90 per cent of the population.

    So far, Geljir’s M-nomad has registered 42 sellers and is working with livestock groups and livestock organizations in North Eastern Kenya that represent more than 5,000 pastoralists.

    Image: Ibrahim Ahmed Co-founder, CEO (left) and Abdirahman Abdullahi, Co-founder, Director of Innovation and Business Development

    Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
    Phone: 0723990204, 0727440240
    Physical address: Wambco Court, Behind NextGen mall, Mombasa road.

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    beauty fish decor

    Paul Mur­age Wachi­uri, a fish breeder at Mt­wapa in Kilifi County has ven­tured into beauty fish farm­ing, a prac­tice that is un­pop­u­lar among farm­ers in Kenya tar­get­ing party events to grow his in­come.

    The idea dawned on Mor­age four years ago when his sis­ter had a wed­ding and had asked him for some beauty fishes as part of the event dec­or­a­tion. On real­iz­ing that guests loved the idea, he de­cided to in­vest in the rare ven­ture to tap into the niche mar­ket.

    “Since then I have dir­ec­ted my ef­fort to­wards the pro­duc­tion of the beauty fish and mar­ket­ing via so­cial media, friends and re­l­at­ives to reach event own­ers and or­gan­isers who hire the fish at a fee de­pend­ing on the event dur­a­tion, the num­ber of the fish needed, and the event loc­a­tion,” said Mur­age.

    In order to provide a full pack­age, he has also pur­chased trans­par­ent 1.5 litres ca­pa­city glass bowls in which the fish which are of dif­fer­ent col­ours are placed for dis­play.

    He says that at the be­gin­ning people were skep­tical about buy­ing the idea but after wit­ness­ing how the fish col­ours the events’ din­ing tables among other places, or­ders have in­creased quite sig­ni­fic­antly over the years.

    “I offer the ser­vices coun­try­wide with most of my cli­ents in Nairobi. I am some­times forced to buy more bowls de­pend­ing on cli­ents’ pref­er­ences es­pe­cially those hold­ing hol­i­day parties who are the ma­jor­ity,” said Mur­age.

    beauty fish in bowls

    RE­LATED CON­TENT: Fish breed­ers and farm­ers net profits with ‘beauty fish’

    The aquar­ium farmer now tar­gets hol­i­days such as those of Decem­ber and New Year to get more cus­tom­ers and grow the ven­ture which is now six years old. His prices are flex­ible and open for ne­go­ti­ation de­pend­ing on the type of event or party and the num­ber of the fish a cli­ent or­ders.

    Kenyan or­na­mental fish in­dustry is the fast­est-grow­ing or­na­mental in­dustry in Africa. It in­cludes loc­ally wild-caught mar­ine spe­cies and cap­tive-bred fresh­wa­ter spe­cies, ac­cord­ing to 2016 re­search by Mary A. Opiyo and other ex­perts on the Over­view of Or­na­mental Fish Pro­duc­tion in Kenya for Kenya Mar­ine and Fish­er­ies Re­search In­sti­tute (KMFRI).

    Presently, the in­dustry con­trib­utes to the eco­nomy of the coun­try by gen­er­at­ing in­come through ex­port earn­ing, cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment and en­han­cing the live­li­hood of the fisher com­munity and fish farm­ers. The mar­ine or­na­mental fish in­dustry in Kenya has an an­nual col­lec­tion of ap­prox­im­ately 300,000 pieces of fish of dif­fer­ent spe­cies.

    In ad­di­tion, the re­search in­dic­ated that the de­mand of or­na­mental or beauty fish presents a con­sid­er­able chal­lenge to con­ser­va­tion and man­age­ment of the aquar­ium in­dustry in Kenya as a res­ult of un­sus­tain­able fish­ing prac­tices that tar­gets ju­ven­ile fish mak­ing them vul­ner­able to de­ple­tion.

    RE­LATED CON­TENT: Kenya\'s fish pro­duc­tion in­creases by 10 per cent im­prov­ing farm­ers’ in­come

    beauty fish

    Mur­age has since star­ted his farm called Pwani Fish Farm and Hatch­ery which sits within half an acre piece of land in Mt­wapa where he also raises fin­ger­lings that he sells to other farm­ers at Sh10 per seed.

    The hatch­ery it­self which has also been ex­ist­ence for six years has a ca­pa­city of 100,000 fin­ger­lings though he pro­duces de­pend­ing on or­ders.

    Mur­age can be reached on +254 737864911

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    camel milkMan milk­ing camel (AFK­Travel)

    A law­yer cum agro-en­tre­pren­eur is bank­ing on the nu­tri­tious value and unique­ness of camel milk from other ru­min­ant’s milk, builds Whit­eGold, a camel milk pro­cessing fact­ory in Nany­uki which has since offered mar­ket for over 20 farm­ers in the area.

    Jama Warsame who is a holder of bach­elor’s de­gree in Law from Uni­versity of Geor­gia and MBA gradu­ate in Stra­tegic Man­age­ment from Ken­nesaw State Uni­versity star­ted the com­pany in April 2018 after the col­lapse of Vital, a giant camel milk pro­cessor in Laikipia County.

    “When the com­pany died, so many farm­ers were af­fected in­clud­ing my mother-in-law who was one of the main sup­pli­ers of camel milk to the firm. Given the health and nu­tri­tion be­ne­fits of the milk and the lack of mar­ket for the farm­ers, I de­cided to set up the fact­ory to re­vive the mar­ket and im­prove nu­tri­tion,” said Warsame.

    Ac­cord­ing to Medi­cinal value of camel milk and meat study pub­lished by Journal of Ap­plied An­imal Re­search on 28 Jul 2017, camel milk and meat are good source of nu­tri­ents for the peoples liv­ing es­pe­cially in the arid and urban areas.

    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Health con­scious middle class drives fan­at­ical up­take of camel products

    GoldWhite camel milk

     

    Camel milk has low cho­les­terol, high min­er­als (so­dium, po­tassium, iron, cop­per, zinc and mag­nesium) and high vit­amin C when com­pared with other ru­min­ant milk. It con­tains vari­ous fatty acids, en­zymes and pro­tect­ive pro­teins. Camel milk has po­ten­tial thera­peutic ef­fects, such as an­ti­bac­terial, an­ti­viral, an­ti­dia­betic, anti-age­ing and an­ti­car­ci­no­genic.
     
    Warsame says the medi­cinal prop­er­ties of camel milk can be at­trib­uted to the wide range of ve­get­a­tion the an­imal feeds on hence has pro­tect­ive pro­teins, which may pos­sibly play a pivotal role for the en­hance­ment of im­mune de­fence mech­an­ism.
     
    Since its in­cep­tion about six months ago, whit­eGold is pro­cessing 500 litres of milk a day of­fer­ing a milk mar­ket for camel farm­ers in the re­gion.
     
    “So far our firm has used a total of Sh3m to train farm­ers whom we have con­trac­ted to sup­ply milk to the plant. This is to en­sure that the milk sup­plied is of the best qual­ity,” said the 41 years old en­tre­pren­eur.
     
    RE­LATED ART­ICLE: Mar­kets open up to Sam­buru camel milk
     
    The com­pany only ac­cepts non-smoked milk which does not have any smell and is of high hy­giene, said Warsame.
     
    Ac­cord­ing to a 2016 pas­tor­al­ism re­search, policy and prac­tice on An­ti­mi­cro­bial Ef­fect of Smoking Milk Hand­ling Con­tain­ers’ Inner Sur­faces as a pre­ser­va­tion method in pas­toral sys­tems in Kenya, pas­toral com­munit­ies in Kenya have used smoke from spe­cific herbs as a tech­nique of dis­in­fect­ing milk-hand­ling con­tain­ers, pre­serving milk and to im­part a char­ac­ter­istic de­sired fla­vour to raw camel milk.
     
    The smoking is ex­pec­ted to ex­tend the shelf life of the camel milk, des­pite the high en­vir­on­mental tem­per­at­ures (>28 °C).
     
    Warsame now sets sights on mak­ing Whit­eGold as Nany­uki hub of camel milk and ex­tends its reach up to the East Africa re­gion and bey­ond.
     
    “I know this may not be easy but with in­vestors and sup­port from the county and na­tional gov­ern­ments we can achieve this faster than ex­pec­ted and offer mar­ket for camel farm­ers and im­prove nu­tri­tion of our people.”
     
     
    Camel milk pro­duc­tion in Kenya is es­tim­ated at 937,000 tonnes in 2013, val­ued at about Sh11bn (108 mil­lion US Dol­lars), ac­cord­ing to Food and Ag­ri­cul­ture Or­gan­iz­a­tion of the United Na­tions. This quant­ity of milk rep­res­ents about 19 per cent of the na­tional Kenyan milk pro­duc­tion.
     
    There­fore, camel milk con­trib­utes to food se­cur­ity and eco­nomic live­li­hoods of com­munit­ies in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) in Kenya.
     
    Warsame sells his milk to the su­per­mar­kets, car­re­fours and sup­plies to Karen and Kay­ole in Nairobi. A half a litre goes for Sh130 and he is yet to in­tro­duce a litre and two litres which will sell at ShSh250 nad Sh500 re­spect­ively.
     
    Ana­lysis of cur­rent camel milk value chain in­dic­ates that only 12 per cent of the milk is mar­keted, the bulk of which is sold in raw form to rural con­sumers (10 per cent), and only two per cent reaches urban con­sumers.
     
    Of the re­main­ing milk (88 per cent) that does not reach the mar­ket, 38 % is dir­ectly used by camel-keep­ing house­holds and their her­ders as part of their food re­quire­ments and the re­main­ing 50 per cent goes to waste.
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