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    By George Munene

    Akimaa Africa is a food pro­cessing com­pany that as­sists rural mil­let farm­ers earn sus­tain­able in­comes through mil­let value ad­di­tion. The com­pany based in Busia County sources mil­let from farm­ers to pro­duce af­ford­able, nu­tri­tious, and glu­ten-free mil­let bar snacks and cakes. 

    Foun­ded in 2017 by food sci­ence and tech­no­logy de­gree gradu­ate Irene Etyang, the busi­ness as well sources honey from rural West­ern Kenya bee­keep­ers. It has fur­ther still ven­tured into using sprouted mil­let, pea­nuts, and tam­ar­ind in the mak­ing of in­stant por­ridge.

    The com­pany sup­ports over 100 farm­ers with high-yield­ing im­proved fin­ger mil­let vari­ety seeds.

    Re­lated News: KALRO in­tro­duces mil­let yield­ing 3X tra­di­tional vari­et­ies & mar­ket­ing pro­gram

    Re­lated News: Re­search­ers de­velop new drought tol­er­ant fin­ger mil­let vari­et­ies res­ist­ant to blast dis­ease and striga weed

    Its food op­tions are tar­geted at health-con­scious con­sumers, selling to them dir­ectly through theirFace­book page. Mil­let is a great al­tern­at­ive to maize and wheat flour-based products as it aids in con­trolling blood sugar. The sol­uble fiber in mil­let can help re­duce the amount of “bad” cho­les­terol in the blood. Cho­les­terol is such a large risk factor for heart dis­ease, mean­ing eat­ing mil­let reg­u­larly helps keep your heart health­ier.

    Mil­let cul­tiv­a­tion is gain­ing re­newed pop­ular­ity amongst farm­ers be­cause of its ver­sat­il­ity and it being easy to grow. Mil­let can be used in the mak­ing of bread, beer, cer­eals, and other dishes.

    Mil­lets are drought tol­er­ant and able to be grown in arid areas. While around 4,000 liters of water pro­duces one kilo­gram of rice, a frac­tion of that can be used to grow mil­let.

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    tukalime 132211959 752990392278803 7836165761206731480 n

    By George Munene

    Tuka­lime Ven­tures is an in­nov­at­ive farm man­age­ment ser­vice that farms and mar­kets your ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duce at a fee. Foun­ded in 2016, the com­pany takes the hustle out of farm­ing, ac­tu­al­ising their cli­ent’s ob­ject­ives by grow­ing in-de­mand crops, em­ploy­ing the right ex­pert­ise, in­puts, and im­ple­ments as well as en­sur­ing timely har­vests and a ready mar­ket for your pro­duce.

    Tuka­lime’s slo­gan is simple: “We plan, we grow, you earn”. With some pre­vi­ous ‘farm from the of­fice’ schemes hav­ing been ex­posed as con jobs; it is un­der­stand­able that for many Kenyans this has a whiff of ‘too good to be true'. However, Tuka­lime’s six-year track re­cord of res­ults— the firm has man­aged over 1,800 acres of farm­land since its in­cep­tion— proves that if done eth­ic­ally, with pro­fes­sion­al­ism and a sound busi­ness plan, ag­ri­cul­tural out­sourcing can be a luc­rat­ive op­tion for those look­ing to ven­ture into farm­ing.

    As a test­a­ment to the firm's suc­cess, in 2020, Kz­anaka Lim­ited, an ag­ri­cul­tural hold­ing com­pany that is home to well-known brands such as Cooper K-Brands Ltd and Analabs in­ves­ted in the bud­ding com­pany. This gives Tuka­lime ac­cess to fin­an­cing as well as spe­cial­ized lab and ag­ro­nomy ser­vices. 

    “Ag­ri­cul­ture is an un­cer­tain en­ter­prise, to min­im­ise risks and max­im­ise profits for our cli­ents we ad­here to the right farm­ing pro­to­cols; proper land pre­par­a­tion, using the right seed, proper crop feed­ing pro­grams, en­sur­ing pests and dis­eases are at an ac­cept­able threshold, and hav­ing ac­cess to mar­kets,” ex­plained Tuka­lime’s founder Kevin Kamau.

    Re­lated News: Kenyan star­tup raises farmer in­comes 50% with mo­bile cold stor­age ser­vice

    Re­lated News: IT spe­cial­ist helps farm­ers ac­quire 2nd hand EU tract­ors at half the cost of new ones

    Hav­ing come back to Kenya after a ten-year stay in the United States, Kevin first got into potato farm­ing in a part­ner­ship; “While my friend handled the hands-on farm­ing, I sourced for and provided mar­ket link­ages,” he says of his first step in farm­ing. Though he had no back­ground in ag­ri­cul­ture, he un­der­stood the ob­vi­ous: food is an es­sen­tial. 

    Tuka­lime was foun­ded one year later. This was driven by his evid­ent ini­tial suc­cess; “Friends out­side the coun­try sought me out to provide a more re­li­able and trans­par­ent way of in­vest­ing in ag­ri­cul­ture bey­ond ‘send­ing money to a cousin’,” he said.

    With a back­ground in eco­nom­ics and fin­ance; Kevin best ex­plains his busi­ness's suc­cess model thusly; “Eco­nom­ics ba­sic­ally in­volves study­ing factors of pro­duc­tion and how to best util­ise them to get an end product. The mar­ket for the ser­vice we offered was there in people look­ing to make an extra in­come through farm­ing. Food is an every­day es­sen­tial, mean­ing the byproduct of our busi­ness also had a ready mar­ket. As an eco­nomy largely held up by ag­ri­cul­ture, skilled ag­ro­nomic la­bour was also avail­able to us.” The com­pany cur­rently has four per­man­ent em­ploy­ees—like many busi­nesses, the Corona pan­demic forced a shav­ing off of staff.

    The firm of­fers a wide range of ser­vices tailor-made for par­tic­u­lar and wide-ran­ging cli­ent needs. These are de­term­ined by factors such as land size, re­gion, and a wide range of op­tions that cater to vari­ous com­plex­it­ies.

    The first step in­volves a farmer reach­ing Tuka­lime and ex­press­ing what they want to real­ise with their farm­land. The com­pany will then con­duct an as­sess­ment to en­sure the in­fra­struc­ture cap­able of ac­tu­al­ising what was out­lined is avail­able.

    A soil test is then con­duc­ted and a budget for­mu­lated with the in­form­a­tion gathered from the farm­ing site. 

    A cli­ent is then given the budget to re­view and if ap­proved, the pro­ject is ini­ti­ated and ex­ecuted ac­cord­ing to the budget and plan.

    Re­lated News: App helps farm­ers re­motely man­age & hire tract­ors

    At the final step har­vest­ing and mar­ket­ing of the pro­duce is fi­nally un­der­taken be­fore a post mortem of the en­tire pro­ject.

    Every step has to be ex­pertly ex­ecuted to real­ise the farmer’s ob­ject­ive; “Farm­ers are char­ging me with ac­tu­al­ising their hopes, am­bi­tions, and dreams, if I failed in my role as their farm man­ager, I would be crushed, “Kevin said.

    Kevin Kamau is amongst this year’s Ag­ri­pren­eur of the Year fi­nal­ist at the Founder of the Year Africa (FOYA) awards.

    His vis­ion for­Tuka­lime is for it to be­come farm­ing’s equi­val­ent to Airbnb; an on­line rental mar­ket­place that has more rooms than any hotel chain in the world without own­ing a single build­ing. “We want to be the lead­ing drivers of safely and af­ford­ably grown food without ac­tu­ally need­ing to own farm­land,” he il­lu­min­ated.

    Tuka­lime: +254 (0)709 094 000/ +254 (0)734 330 044 

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    soko fresh Kenya

    By George Munene

    Foun­ded in 2019, Soko Fresh of­fers farm-level cold-stor­age ser­vices and di­gital mar­ket link­ages to small and me­dium-scale farm­ers on a pay-as-you-go busi­ness model. Char­ging just one shil­ling per piece/kilo­gram stored, farm­ers re­port earn­ing up to 50 per cent more than they pre­vi­ously did from their har­vests. Buy­ers for their part re­ceive more and bet­ter-qual­ity pro­duce.

    Ac­cord­ing to a Na­tional Bur­eau of Stat­ist­ics (KNBS) 2018 re­port, Kenya’s post-har­vest losses were es­tim­ated at 20 per cent. This amoun­ted to 1.9 mil­lion tonnes of food, and earn­ings worth Sh150 bil­lion as farm­ers struggled to man­age, store, and trans­port their pro­duce to mar­kets.

    For Kenya's hor­ti­cul­tural ex­port­ers, up to 50 per cent of har­vest is wasted for fail­ing to meet phytosan­it­ary and cos­metic stand­ards, often as a res­ult of sub­stand­ard stor­age con­di­tions.

    While small-scale farm­ers ac­count for over 70 per cent of Kenya's ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion, they bear the brunt of these losses due to a lack of cold-stor­age tech­no­lo­gies that are avail­able to large-scale pro­du­cers. Soko Fresh’s mo­bile cold stor­age solu­tion seeks to bridge this gap. The in­nov­at­ive model gives farm­ers, traders, and ex­port­ers a risk-free op­por­tun­ity to safe­guard the qual­ity of agri-pro­duce im­prov­ing their bot­tom line.

    Re­lated News: Her­metic bags trans­form grain stor­age, cut­ting costs, losses and aflatoxin

    Re­lated News: Im­proved grain stor­age tech­no­logy bright­ens up Kenyan farm­ers

    Har­ves­ted pro­duce is housed in solar en­ergy-powered off-grid mo­bile cold stor­age units with tem­per­at­ures ran­ging from four to twelve de­grees and a ca­pa­city of hold­ing up to five tonnes of pro­duce each. 

    This op­tim­ises ag­greg­a­tion from small­hold­ers mean­ing the cost of lo­gist­ics is sig­ni­fic­antly re­duced as off-takers do not have to pick pro­duce from mul­tiple farm­ers in dis­par­ate loc­a­tions. 

    These farmer groups and co­oper­at­ives are then linked to ex­port­ers, whole­salers, and pro­cessors. A suc­cess fee is charged as a per­cent­age on the mar­ket link­age en­abled sales.

    Precooling Hass Avocado in Rural Muranga. A look inside the Offgrid Mobile Cold storage facility

    Ex­plain­ing the value pro­pos­i­tion offered by Soko Fresh to both farm­ers and agro-pro­duce buy­ers, Paul van der Linden the com­pany’s chief fin­an­cial of­ficer elu­cid­ated; “Sourcing sig­ni­fic­ant amounts of pro­duce from small­holder farm­ers takes time, farm­ers and off-takers have to con­stantly bal­ance the high cost of trans­port­a­tion with the high losses caused by field heat and non-op­timal stor­age con­di­tions. With cold stor­age, they are able to ag­greg­ate large volumes for two to four days without ex­per­i­en­cing the food loss that oc­curs at out­side tem­per­at­ures. Trucks are then util­ized at full ca­pa­city, re­du­cing the cost of lo­gist­ics. Re­duced food loss and re­duced lo­gist­ics costs, make a very strong busi­ness case for cold stor­age. With this cold chain in­stalled, the door to ex­port mar­kets is opened up, en­abling a higher price point for the pro­duce of our farm­ers.”

    Re­lated News: Kibiri­chia farmer lifts potato earn­ings 50% with stor­age and off-sea­son sales

    Cur­rently, Soko­Fresh has three cold stor­age con­tain­ers hand­ling avo­ca­dos, man­goes, and french beans--value chains in which they have se­cured cus­tom­ers. The units are in Embu; where up to 150 farm­ers store 9,000 kilo­grams of avo­cado; Mak­ueni, and Mur­ang'a.

    The com­pany is cur­rently work­ing on six new stores. In five years Soko­Fresh tar­gets to have a net­work of 400 cold stor­age units; this will raise the in­comes of over 35,000 farm­ers and cre­ate 3,000 new rural jobs.

     
    Soko­Fresh: +254 (0)20 200 0154 | Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

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