Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Kenya: An Update
It’s been 5 months since I last wrote an update on Vunatec, so I wanted to share a brief article summarizing what we’ve been working on and plans for the future.
Towards to end of 2023, I was focused on keeping our pilot project going with the farmers in Iveti, which I talked about in my last update. During my time in Kenya last summer, I met a man named Daniel when my cofounders and I visted Fred’s Ranch. Fred’s Ranch is a tourist attraction in Kitengela, which is about a 2 hour drive from Nairobi. What’s amazing about it is that Kitengela is known for being extremely dry, with much of the land appearing desertified. However, Fred’s Ranch was able to take a 10 acre plot of this dead land and turn it into a lush green paradise. Daniel was a young agronomist who gave us a tour of the ranch, and explained how permaculture techniques were being used to grow the wide variety of crops that were present on the farm.
Pictured (left to right): Andrew, Betty, and Daniel during the tour of Fred’s Ranch
Daniel was extremely knowledgeable and very inspiring to talk to. He told me about his plans to one day start a farm of his own and transform a seemingly dead landscape into a lush garden, similar to what Fred’s Ranch had done. I learned a lot about permaculture from him, and knew that I wanted to work with him. I hired him to be Vunatec’s agronomist, and he came with us to visit the farmers in Iveti to run a workshop. It was evident that the farmers learned a lot from him during that workshop. We also brought Daniel to Vunatec’s own small avocado farm in Machakos, and he made recommendations on how to enhance the soil quality and implement permaculture techniques on the farm.
A sign at Fred’s Ranch explaining the circular economy business model that they used
Since returning from Kenya, I’ve kept in pretty regular contact with Daniel and my goal was to help my team organize a few more training sessions with the farmers in Iveti. However, this proved to be a lot more difficult to do from the other side of the world, and unfortunately we have not been able to run additional training sessions for the farmers since I left the country. This has further solidifed my appreciation for the importance of being in Kenya, especially during these early stages of Vunatec. I’m anxious to graduate university and finally be able to spend sufficient time on the ground.
Besides efforts to continue the pilot project with the Iveti farmers, I’ve also spent time developing the next iteration of the Vunatec prototype. As I alluded to in my previous update, it doesn’t make since to build a mobile farmer-facing platform for smallholder farmers. Instead, we are working on creating a USSD interface for the farmer-facing software. My friend Duc has been volunterring some of his time to help me build this interface as well as the database that will ultimately connect it to the buyer-facing mobile interface. Our goal is to have this finished by the time I return to Kenya this summer so that we can test it with farmers and get feedback.
Speaking of returning to Kenya, I have already booked my flights to go back this summer! This time, I’ll be spending about two months there from mid-June to late-August. A lot of my time recently has been focused on planning what I want to accomplish while I’m there so I don’t waste a single day. This includes applying for some pitch competitions and funding opportunities so I am not limited by resources. The other day I submitted an application to the Hult Prize, and if we advance to semi-finals we’ll have the chance to pitch Vunatec in Nairobi. The grand prize is $1 million dollars in non-dilutive funding. Vunatec was also recently accepted to the QYourVenture program at Queen’s, which offers microgrants, workspace, and mentorship to its members. The DDQIC has been extremely supportive so far, and I learned that they run a pretty sophisticated program in Africa called the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship. When I am back in Kenya, they said there are a number of people and resources from the program located in Nairobi that they can connect me to, which I expect will be a huge help.
Broadly speaking, my main priorities when I return to Kenya this summer will be the following:
Rekindling the pilot project with the Iveti farmers and developing a plan with Betty, Andrew, and Daniel on how we will continue it once I leave again
By the time I leave, I want to have detailed insights and feedback on our prototype of the farmer-facing interface and I want to have hired a developer to rebuild our mobile buyer-facing prototype
Networking — I feel as though I didn’t prioritize this enough last summer, so I want to challenge myself to attend networking events and meet more people in the agriculture space who are working on similar things (I’ll definitely leverage the Jim Leech Fellowship network for this)
Building more partnerships — our team did this very well last summer and I would like to strengthen existing partnerships and continue building new ones
Realigning with my team on our plan for the next few years, and ensuring everything is in place for after I graduate (for example, getting everything I need in order to apply for the Pathy Fellowship, of which I am hoping to join the 10th cohort next year)
Before I sign off, I want to reiterate my gratitude for the Cansbridge Fellowship Alumni Endowment fund (AEF), without which I never would have been able to go to Kenya either last summer or this summer and make a serious attempt at growing Vunatec. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for the next update!
