Agribusiness opens doors for Bungoma jobless youth

Youths have energy and time but lack resources and opportunities to put this energy to use.

With the high rate of unemployment and the increased number of jobless youths, there is a need to get creative and venture into entrepreneurship with the little capital one can get.

After years of unsuccessful job hunting, a group of three university graduates decided to join forces with a former agri-business trainer to better their lives through agri-business and came up with the first ever food mart in Bungoma—Andy’s Greens.

Andrew Wekunda who is the founder of the company says it started as a Community Based Organisation with 20 members.

“When I decided to actualise my dream of owning a company that provides market solutions to farmers, I had many youths wanting to join but a business like this is demanding, so most of them dropped out and I remained with only three that I now work with,” he said.

Andy’s Greens store is operated by four youths—Chris Mbaya, Faith Ndanyo, Ken Nyukuri and Wekunda.

Mbaya did a course in hospitality management and tourism at the Cooperative University and graduated in 2018.

Wekunda is a lawyer, Ndanyo is a teacher while Nyukuri studied business and commerce.

Wekunda says the store was opened in mid 2020 purposely to have a place where farmers’ produce can be channeled at fair prices, before being moved on to consumers and at the same time help them earn a living.

“When Covid-19 hit Kenya in 2020, it brought about restriction of movement and interactions, we decided to step up and find something that would help bring farm produce close to consumers and at the same time help us make some money,” he added.

When they started, Wekunda had five acres of land that he had planted Kunde which they used to harvest and hawk around Bungoma town.

From his previous hustles at One Acre Fund, Wekunda had bought a van which they started using to move from one market to another in search of fresh farm produce to satisfy their growing customer demands.

However, they were not making any progress because the largest amount of their earnings went into fuelling the van.

This was sorted when they decided to change their mode of operation and only focus on buying their products directly from farmers and cut down on dealing with middle men.

“We were spending so much money on fuel moving around markets of which sometimes we failed to get the quality of goods we needed for our clients. We decided to go out for a field survey and talk to farmers and convince them to start supplying their produce to us at fair prices," Ndanyo said.

With these small but steady milestones they were making, the business grew and they moved from hawking into owning a food mart store where they now source their products directly from farmers in Mt Elgon.

The farm produce includes Irish potatoes, tomatoes, cabbages, traditional vegetables, different types of fruits and roots.

Ndanyo told the star that their intention has always been to uplift the farmer by providing ready market for their yields while at the same time providing easy and quick access to fresh farm produce to consumers.

They mostly sell on wholesale with their target customers being the mama mboga who own small business and also supply to hotels within Bungoma town as well as walk in clients.

“We wanted to help the mama mboga have an easy time getting vegetables and fruits at a fair price so that they can also make profits and also cut down on the cost of going all the way to Chwele market, which is kilometers, away to get this product,” Wekunda added.

He said different organisations train farmers and provide inputs for them but they do not train them on how to sell their farm products.

 The group has a standard of quality that the farmers supplying to them are supposed to meet and as such they train them through agronomic machine learning, where farmers are taught on what products to use while planting in order to get high yields.

The group has managed to buy a lorry and employed two drivers whose role is to pick agricultural produce from farmers.

At Andy’s Greens store, prices are favourable to both the farmer and the consumer. For instance, they purchase cabbage at Sh20 from the farmer and sell it at Sh30.

In most markets, the same size of cabbage goes for up to Sh50. They buy a 100kg bag of Irish potatoes at Sh1,700 and sell it at Sh2,200.

“Our approach leans towards helping the farmer realise maximum benefits from his/her venture,” Wekunda says.

“The farmers we work with are happy because, for example, those who sell potatoes know that after two to three days, we are ready to take about 70 bags from them,” Ndanyo said.

Their biggest challenge, however, is the rough terrains they have to contend with as they go to the farms to pick the produce.

“Our lorry has broken down severally because of the bad roads especially in Mt Elgon, but that does not dampen our spirits,” Mbaya said.

Their venture is now paying off with its growth and they have now created employment opportunities for six jobless youths.

The future of Andy’s Greens seems bright with the four ambitious members being optimistic that they will expand to the neighbouring towns of Kakamega, Kisumu and Eldoret in the near future.

“Agri-business is the future and Kenyan youths should stop sitting around waiting for the government to provide job opportunities and venture into this sector, it pays,” Ndanyo added.