Success story of a shrewd innovator

Nairobi,Kenya:  He was once the village novice. But today, the
shrewd innovator has been rated one of the most enterprising and
admired minds.

His firm, Kaki Village Enterprises, currently valued at Sh10 million,
started in 2002 with capital of just Sh600.

This was due to the iron
will of the owner to innovate in the poultry industry by rearing
different poultry breeds.

kari kienyeji chicken

Since buying his first exotic hen from his mother in 1985, for Sh20,
the 36-year Geoffrey Kago, has never had to rely on his parents
for upkeep or even school fees.
By then, he was in Class Four. His role model was the legendary
Nelson Muguku, one of Kenya’s first poultry billionaires.

That first hen
was a Transylvania Naked Neck, which has no feathers on its neck.
“I bought it with my own savings,” said Kago.

He chose it because it was a fast breeder. In a year, he was able
to breed nearly 200 chickens, which he sold locally in his Nyeri
neighbourhood for between Sh20 to Sh50.

 

The rapidly expanding brood enabled Kago to save enough money to
fund his high school education at Nyeri High from Forms Two to Four.

“I loved to get the sense of ownership,” said Kago, emphasising the
independence that rearing poultry at such a young age gave him.
High school was a major ground that nurtured interest and innovation
in poultry technology. Having experienced the problems traditional
hatching posed, he conceptualised and developed an electric
incubator. It won first place in the 1985 high school science congress
at district level and came second nationally.

He nonetheless faced challenges, including the time a neighbour
poisoned all of the expansive brood.

He confesses that was hard to
take in, but says it spurred him forwards in pouring his energy into
his poultry innovations.

In 1997, he settled in Kiserian. To make ends meet, he worked as a
casual stone-mason and labourer, and then apprentice carpenter,
including a two-year stint in a funeral home where he learnt joinery.
extra income.

The carpentry skills he learnt equipped him with solid knowledge to
innovate. He got so adept, he was able to make a pool table. His last
work outside the poultry industry was working as a cigarettes
hawker in Kiserian in the late 1990s to early 2000s.

It was cigarette hawking that provided him with Sh600 capital to
make his first commercial electric incubator.

He was spurred by the
clarion call by the former President Kibaki in 2002, urging optimistic
Kenyans to use their knowledge to improve their lives.

It was his light bulb moment for Kaki Village Enterprise. From the
first incubator, he diversified into making Candlers for checking eggs’
fertility. He also dabbled in training farmers in the basics of rearing
poultry and hatching. Since 2002, Kago has managed to expand his
poultry and innovation business into three branches. 

In Eldoret, he
has a hatchery and also develops incubators for sales. At Laikipia, he
has five acres where he conducts poultry farmer trainings.

He also breeds other rarely bred birds like ostriches, quails, ducks
and guinea fowls.

Farmer training
The farm also has a mini-dam he intends to use to go into fish and
duck farming. “It’s also a nature centre, where I demonstrate other
models of farming,” said Kago. He trains farmers at a cost of
Sh2500 per head.

He has also opened a branch of his company at Gitaru, along the
Nairobi-Nakuru highway to be close to the Capital City.
There, he holds demonstrations of his latest projects, which include a
new frontier in exotic poultry farming.

At Gitaru, he has 1000 quails,
six ostriches, 60 guinea fowl, 200 ‘Kienyeji’ chickens, 30 turkeys and
10 geese on half an acre of land.

The rearing of birds other than hens is to show their viability as
alternative sources of meat and eggs.

He also views them as
cheaper alternatives, arguing that guinea fowls, for instance, are
grazers and quails consume a tenth of the feeds eaten by chicken.

Also “they are more resistant to diseases and good sources of white
meat,” said Kago. Currently, he sells breeding guinea fowls at Sh3000
and non breeding for Sh1000. He gets over 50 enquiries a week for
the birds.

To breed birds like quails, geese and ostrich he obtained a Kenya
Wildlife License. He admits he knows 1000 other farmers licensed, but
no breeder is yet meeting the demand. “I encourage more farmers
to diversify their poultry rearing,” said Kago.

Stakeholders who have sourced his innovations include the Ministry of
Agriculture, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, Africa Medical
Research Fund and NGOs involved in poverty alleviation projects.

His company also engages in the production of Posho Mills, feed
mixture machines that farmers can use to formulate feeds for
livestock. The costs of these machines go up to Sh600, 000. Kago
has now set his sights on nailing much lower cost production as his
next challenge.

He believes Kenyans are innovative enough to create technology
solutions unique to their problems, rather than getting technology
from Europe and China, which is expensive and can be hard to
assimilate locally.

“If our athletics can do it we can too,” he said to emphasize the
potential Kenyans have if they get the knowledge.
—FarmBiz Africa

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