Jane Wambui: From Training to the Agricultural Value Chain.

For most Kenyan youth, transitioning to higher education is the key to unlocking opportunities. However, these opportunities are not always viable for families in last-mile communities in Kenya who struggle to make ends meet. It is often the end of the road to their dreams. For Jane, as the firstborn in her family, she had to put her dreams of pursuing higher education on hold. Her parents could not afford to pay for her college fees after completing her O levels.

The #SocialEntreprenuership training is all she needed to re-ignite the spark. Jane Wambui joined the W4 ICT training program in Kajiado, Kenya as part of the digital incubation cohort. The opportunity to join the W4 training program was heaven-sent. She joined the program where she gained the much-needed ICT and Social Entrepreneurship skills. It is during the program that her passion for farming was ignited. After weighing the options she realized that she did not need to have acres of land to put her dream into reality. She eventually settled for poultry farming as her project.

Turning Lessons into Opportunities

Wambui has always been passionate about farming. She pursued Agriculture as one of her subjects in high school. This ignited her passion and gave her foundational knowledge of farming. Her choice of poultry farming was further advised by her dad’s diagnosis of diabetes after which the doctor advised that he needed to stick to a strict diet.

Further research on the condition led her to the realization that lifestyle diseases have been on the rise in Kenya mainly because of unhealthy food choices. The population is slowly acknowledging the need for embracing healthy lifestyles resulting in the growing demand for white meat. This inspired Jane to start organic poultry farming.

Championing Organic Lifestyle

With the help of a Ksh.34,000 grant from W4, she set up her poultry farming project at her home in Kajiado in April 2022. Her project involves rearing poultry organically whereby she does not use processed feeds for her poultry and she also rears the indigenous breed commonly known as “Kienyeji” chicken in Kenya. She is already establishing her market base in Kajiado town

Despite being very passionate about poultry keeping, her choice of project was advised by the increase in the number of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and blood pressure, especially among the elderly in the society with her father recently being diagnosed with diabetes. She uses her project to encourage healthy eating habits by selling white meat to her clients as well as eggs.

She aims to grow her business by increasing her client base and empowering the community by sourcing poultry and eggs from them to meet the growing demand.