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| Mr. Kago and his birds |
With a capital of around
$10 that he saved while hawking cigarettes in the streets of Kenya's
capital, Nairobi, Geoffrey Kago started a business in 2002 that is now
valued at $120,000 (£75,600).
It all began with an idea that he had been hatching for a
while - to build egg incubators in order to have a more stable source of
income.
Besides peddling tobacco, he had taken up casual jobs as a
stone mason and labourer, and then as an apprentice carpenter, including
a two-year stint in a funeral home.
His carpentry skills equipped him with a solid knowledge to make wooden electric incubators.
"After the incubator-making business, I was
able to get my own chicks, and from my own chicks that's when other
people came and told me: 'Can you make me another incubator?', and then I
saw a business," he told the BBC series African Dream.
Besides building incubators for sale, his company - Kaki
Village Enterprises - now rears chicken, geese, ostriches, quails, ducks
and guinea fowls. It also offers training to farmers and does business
consultation.
The firm directly employs seven people - in a farm at Gitaru
Kikuyu, on the outskirts of Kenya's capital - and indirectly many more,
Mr Kago said.
By rearing birds other than chickens he aims to show their viability as alternative sources of meat and eggs.
He also says they are cheaper, arguing that guinea fowls, for
instance, are grazers and quails consume a tenth of the feeds eaten by
chicken. He also says they are more resistant to diseases and good
sources of white meat.
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| Guinea fowls in Kago's farm |
He said that at the moment he is trying to promote a
Cameroonian type of quail that is big and easy to rear. According to
him, it is also rich in proteins and could help people who are ill.
"We've introduced it in our Kenyan menu. It's convenient to keep and cheap," the entrepreneur told BBC Africa's Ruth Nesoba.
Mr Kago said he gradually acquired the skills necessary to run his business.
"I put myself in secondary school. So I had a
history of 'If your parents cannot do it, can you do it for yourself?',"
he explained.
"All this technical training that I possess today, it's my
own initiative to go and understand it, to go and do research, and to
come up with what I needed for my own innovation and for my business to
progress."
Stakeholders who have sourced his innovations include the
Ministry of Agriculture, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI),
Africa Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) and NGOs involved in poverty
alleviation projects.
But things have not always gone as planned. Mr Kago remembers
a time, in 2004, when he was starting to learn to rear ostriches and
more than 100 eggs that were about to hatch were lost because of a power
cut.
He said that he had invested a lot of time and money in them.
"Even today it pains me to remember that. 120 eggs of ostrich went to waste due to someone that switched off the power."
But he did not bury his head in the sand and a year later
things got better when someone else asked him to incubate some eggs for
him.
"I said yes… I never knew how to hatch ostrich but after 42
days I found an ostrich inside my hatchery. I was very excited. In fact,
I've never been excited like that even today.
"And from that day, it prepared me to do the research of
ostrich, and out of it today I have a very elaborate research on how you
can breed and rear ostrich."
Mr Kago said that people in his line of business have to take into account other potential problems.
"Sometimes you're doing a new bird, and that new bird nobody
has kept, so you face the first consequences of the challenges of
diseases and the other things, and the feeding also."
And what advice would he give to budding entrepreneurs?
"Look for resources and fund your own projects. Other people will meet you on the way. They'll come and help you.
"Don't wait for donors. Don't wait for the government. If you
have an idea, start scratching and looking for funds for that idea
because at the end of the day you're the beneficiary of that idea."
Geoffrey Kago
- Age: 37
- Married, with two children
- Previous jobs: Stone mason, labourer, carpenter, cigarette hawker
- Started Kaki Village Enterprises in 2002
- Hobbies: Travelling, visiting science exhibitions and sometimes dabbling in politics
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