From raising sister's chicks, he is now Kakamega's top 'kuku' man

The German-born physicist Albert Einstein said “you have to learn the rules of the game and then play better than anyone else”.

After several false starts, Andrew Makatiani did not give up. He kept on trying until he got it right. 

Makatiani started keeping chicken by accident. It was all about refunding his sister-in-law chickens she gave him to raise for her but they all died due to poor care. 

“My sister-in-law was staying in a rented unit and the landlord could not allow her to keep chickens. She brought the chicks her hen hatched to my place. They started dying one after the other," he told the Star at his Lutonyi home in Kakamega. 

“I then decided that I would be buying hens and cocks whenever I got some money. After some time, the hens started laying and eventually hatched chicks which we started raising.”

One day while in Kakamega town, Makatiani overheard someone asking where she would get indigenous chicks and he told her that he could supply. He made Sh7,000 from his first sale. 

“This was when I knew that chicks pay and I decided to explore the opportunity,” he said. 

Makatiani’s journey started after he left Kenya College of Communications with a diploma in business studies in 2004. 

He joined his elder brother Patrick Shamala, who was operating a wholesale in Mumias town, where he learnt some business skills between 2005 and 2006. He then decided to chart his own path. 

He started by selling molasses but after a few years in business the government launched intensive crackdowns on molasses dealers because it was used for chang’aa brewing. 

“I was invited to one of the brewing dens by one of my clients and the state in which I saw youth there forced me out of the trade because I thought I couldn’t support a business that was eroding the lives of young people,” he said. 

Makatiani then started selling eggs which he imported from Uganda and supplied across the former Western province. 

Although the business was tiresome because of travelling all the time to and from Uganda to fetch stock, at least it sustained him and his family. 

The business would, however, collapse in 2014 after he trusted one of his suppliers from Uganda and sent him Sh350,000 to supply eggs. The supplier varnished with the money, rendering Makatiani jobless. 

He then had to look for other income generating activities like training drama clubs in schools. 

The father of five, four boys and one girl, was born in Mumias Sugar Company estates where his father, Julius Makatiani, worked as an agricultural officer in the agronomy section. 

He went to Booker Academy for his primary education before joining Kakamega School but he dropped out after two years when he developed medical complications that kept him out of school for a year.  

He resumed his secondary education in Form 3 at Sheywe Secondary School where he sat his ‘O’ levels. He went to the Kenya College of Communications where he took a diploma in business studies. 

Between 2015 and 2017 was perhaps the defining moment for Makatiani and his wife Lilian Serenge, with whom he founded Lianfam Africa Limited. 

Still jobless, Makatiani met a friend, Joel Osale, who worked for a local agrovet that had a feed production mill. 

He started visiting his workplace to keep him company, sometimes offering to help him for free and in the process learnt something about poultry feeding and vaccination. 

Makatiani said he bought his first incubator and a generator out of his little savings from training drama in schools in May 2017 to buy eggs to start brooding chicks. 

He started incubating and hatching chicks, a business that picked up well and he made the initial deliveries to his clients only for it to abruptly come to an end with clients’ no-show. 

“When we tried to find out what may have happened, we realised that we had been selling chicks that were not properly vaccinated and that was why the clients were avoiding us since they used to die,” he said. 

“We started keeping our own chicks and they started dying again and we realised that the brooding standards were low. We knew very little about breeding. This prompted us to research through the internet on how to create a good brooding environment,” he said. 

Makatiani then started making his own brooder after studying how it works. “Some people thought that I was mad when I told them that I was making my own brooder,” he said. 

He said a friend linked him to the Kakamega government where an officer guided him and this helped him exhibit his brooder at the 2018 ASK show in the county. He won the best invention and innovation award. 

“That win put me in a different place. I went to the show with the hope that I would find a buyer for my brooder, but I came back with it with a good award,” he said. 

Two months later, Makatiani participated in the Western region youth in agribusiness championship. His business idea was rated second and was awarded 1,000 Euros to invest in his business. 

The good tidings were successively followed by a contract for brooding chicks for the county government’s poultry projects and this gave him the much needed drive to push on with the business. 

Today, Makatiani is one of the referral points for poultry farmers in Kakamega, Siaya and Vihiga counties. He sells up to 20,000 chicks annually. His company also collects chicken from farmers and links them to the market. 

He is in the process of constructing a micro-processing plant that will process chickens into different products. 

It will process 150 chickens per hour, package and brand them with their logoand give the farmers raising rights. 

“I don’t regret what I'm doing. Just like wine, you become fine as you age. I think I have become fine because the more you engage in something, the more consistent you become and grow and the more visible you get. At this point it will be suicidal for me to think of quitting. I'm just about to start realising the fruit of my investments,” he said. 

“I started with an idea, believed and developed it. I would like to advise young people to develop ideas, follow them religiously through thick and thin and money will follow the trail of ideas. We learnt that young people quit business before they even start it," Makatiani added. 

He said the country’s economy is hurting because of overreliance on the culture of tokenism, which is killing the breeding and execution of brilliant ideas among young people. 

Makatiani said they have developed a business plan and ready to journey to success. 

“We know where we have come from, where we are and where we want to go and how to get there. We have established strong networks with development partners and together we’re able to walk into the future confidently as we engage and discuss our business development plans with them".

Edited by Henry Makori