New beans could transform Kenyan canning industry

Researchers from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, with support from Bio-resource Innovations Network for Eastern Africa Development (Bio-Innovate) Program, have developed superior, better-yielding, drought-resistant varieties of beans.  

The varieties have good canning properties and are resistant to drought and multiple diseases.  

The beans have now gone through validation process by the regulators have much shorter cooking time — about 40 per cent less cooking time compared to what is currently in the market — an attribute that is favourable to the canning industry and consumers because it significantly reduces energy costs. READ MORE: www.scidev.net

Flower farms turn to solar energy

Kenya's flower farms have started investing in solar power projects as they seek to cut the cost of electricity and its reliability from the national grid.

The solar power projects are also meant to enable the farms reduce their use of diesel power generators, the main option for many flower farms in Kenya when there is power blackout.

The latest flower farm to start putting up solar power project is Red Lands Roses, based in Ruiru, 27 km east of the capital Nairobi. read more: english.peopledaily.com.cn

Homa Bay County Governor Signs Sh595b Grant with Donors

Homa Bay County has entered into a mega partnership with two international organisations that would see it benefit from Sh595 billion project. The money is given in form of grant.The new partnership aims at turning the agriculturally rich and fish endowed county into an Agri-City with a vibrant mix of businesses, infrastructure and standard urban amenities.The project is a joint venture between Good Earth Power, Urban Green Energy and the county, and will be rolled out in phases for a period of 30 years. The UK’s Good Earth Power is the major partner. Read more: www.mwakilishi.com/.../homa-bay-county-strikes-gold-as-governor-signs-sh595b-grant-with-donors

County data: opendata.go.ke/facet/counties/Homa+Bay

Image source: hotelgraceyhomabay.blogspot.com

Sh15b plan to increase food production.

The government will spend Sh15 billion to develop one million acres of land to increase food supply especially in arid and semi-arid pastoral areas. Deputy President William Ruto has announced.  Source: Sunday Nation june 9, 2013, page 24.

Hub for bio-tech in east African region

Kenya has emerged as a leader in the development and use of biotechnology in the east and central African region. It was among the first African nations to embrace the use of biotechnology, especially in the agriculture sector. Read more: www.coastweek.com

Image Source: Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB) Kenya chapter.

Mfarm & Samsung launch M-Farm mobile application

Mfarm limited, an award winning software solutions and agribusiness company has announced the partnership with Samsung that has seen them release their mobile application, which is available on both Android and Samsung’s Bada based phones.

The mobile tool allows farmers to receive accurate, real-time crop price information daily, 6 days a week, being sourced from 5 major markets in Kenya: Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret and Kitale. The M-Farm web application gives monthly analysis of the crop prices in different markets, showing the price trends. Therefore, the farmer is able to make informed economic decisions on what to plant when, how to price his produce and where to sell.

The official launch shall be on  the  5th of June 2012 at Ole Sereni hotel Nairobi alongside the Pivot East conference. The m-farm app can be found at Samsung Apps store. source: www.ihub.co.ke/blog
About

MFarm Ltd is a software solution and agribusiness company. M-Farm, is a transparency tool for Kenyan farmers where they simply SMS the number 3535 to get information pertaining to the retail price of their products, buy their farm inputs directly from manufacturers at favorable prices, and find buyers for their produce.

MFarm is designed to: 
- Enable farmers to inquire current market prices of different crops from different regions and/or specific markets.
- Aggregate farmers needs/orders and connect them with farm input suppliers.
- Enable farmers to sell collectively and connect them with a ready market.
Source: www.mfarm.co.ke/about

Toyota opens dealership in Meru to tap from miraa traders

Toyota Kenya has opened a dealership in Meru town in Central Kenya to gain from the lucrative miraa (khat) sector whose traders have emerged as top buyers of the company’s pick-up trucks.

The dealership is also expected to provide after-sales services.

“Meru farmers have embraced our pick-up trucks due to their hardiness in as far as transportation of agricultural produce is concerned,” said Theuns van Rensburg, a general manager at the Japanese car maker franchise in Kenya. read on: businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate+News

Blogger’s passion for agriculture blossoms

After failing to secure formal employment after her graduation, Emmie Kio Wachira, 22, opted to blog on Agriculture “to keep my passion alive.”

Less than a year later, her energy has been recognised and her efforts rewarded after her blog, ‘Tracking the scent’ was named the winning agriculture blog in the just concluded BAKE (Bloggers Association of Kenya) award.

The non-monetary award has inspired her to continue blogging. “Blogging is what keeps my love for agriculture alive,” she says.

Her pet subjects include land conservation, farm-tech, food security, business opportunities and funding. read on: www.businessdailyafrica.com

Women group turns hyacinth curse into flowering business

Even as the fishermen of Lake Victoria curse the invasion of the water hyacinth, which has reduced their catch, the Dala Rieko Women’s Group is busy counting its blessings instead.

With the help of a Norwegian investor, the group is transforming the Dala Riek area by making and supplying compost manure made out of the weed that has threatened to choke Lake Victoria.

Margaret Odolla, the caretaker of the group that comprises six other women’s organisations says that they are turning the weed into a gold mine.
read on: www.businessdailyafrica.com

Can an African 'green revolution' feed the world?

Lilian Kayes picks kales from her 'garden in a sack' in Nairobi's Kibera slum. 

Urban hunger is a growing problem in Kenya due to rising food prices and high rates of unemployment. REUTERS 

This story by Katy Migiro is part of AlertNet's special report Solutions for a hungry world.

Her bare feet coated with mud, Sabena Gitau trudged down the rain-sodden hillside to her banana plantation, machete in hand.

She chose and cut several giant bunches of bananas, which she strapped to a motorbike to be taken to nearby Saba Saba town, 77 km (48 miles) north of Nairobi, to be weighed, graded and sold.

A decade ago, Gitau made the same 10 km trip a couple of times a month, on foot with her bananas on her back, earning about 420 shillings ($5) for the dawn-to-dusk trek.


Today, after planting improved varieties and working as part of a cooperative to boost her access to markets, the 59-year-old grandmother earns 30,000 shillings ($360) a month from her bananas, selling them at 13 shillings a kilo rather than three.

“I am not educated. My father denied me that chance. But I've made something of my life,” said Gitau, who has bought seven dairy cows with some of her profits.

She also recently planted 100 passion fruit vines as part of an $11 million project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Coca Cola, to have 50,000 Kenyan and Ugandan smallholders produce fruit for Minute Maid juice and double their incomes in the process.

As the world looks for ways to boost food production by at least 70 percent by 2050 to feed an increasingly hungry planet, many people are looking to sub-Saharan Africa -- a region with 50 to 60 percent of the planet's unused arable land. read more: www.trust.org/alertnet/news/

Zack Matere's knowledge search story

Zack Matere, a farmer in Soy, Kenya, searched for a way to save his dying crops. What he discovered was a desire to help local farmers and businesses access information.
+zack matere is using the Internet to help people in his village and neighboring communities access information. He recently shared his "best ever picture," a snapshot of two of his friends, sitting in a field, a laptop in front of them on the ground, looking at the Internet for the first time.


"My best ever picture. When I share content with the people like omari in the picture , it always hits me.....the internet is just words and pictures ...and( anyone whatever level of life he she is) can learn from words and pictures. Omari can also share his thoughts in words and pictures.
How does he do this? .......thats why a network of village noticeboards known as leo pamoja that is now being set up in 5 villages in the interior of western Kenya....."

Zack is bringing the Internet to people who otherwise couldn't access it through a network of physical notice boards, where useful information from the Internet, such as farming tips and crop prices, are posted for everyone to see. The system has become a gateway to information that would otherwise remain out of reach for many of the people in this region.

Watch Zack's search story

And add him on Google+ to follow his journey.

First underwater museum

Just before the Portuguese surrendered to the Arabs in 1697, there was an intense battle for control of Fort Jesus.

In the process, a Portuguese warship that had been deployed near the fort was sunk. Christened Santo Antonio, the ship still lies on the sea bed near the fort, piling on rust by the kilo.

But Santo Antonio’s fate could soon change because the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) is planning to salvage it and turn it into a tourist attraction.

Industry players say there is a fortune lying deep in the waters that surround Mombasa, one of the most important trade and military destinations of the 17th century. Read more: Daily Nation February 02, 2012

Doctor Frank Njenga fights mental health stigma in 'traumatized continent'

Every week CNN International's African Voices highlights Africa's most engaging personalities, exploring the lives and passions of people who rarely open themselves up to the camera.

As Kenya's leading psychiatrist, Frank Njenga has been championing the cause of better mental health care on the east African country and the continent for more than three decades.

He's been working tirelessly to bring quality mental health care in a country where mentally disabled people receive little help from the state and face massive stigma from society.

"It's a horrible indictment on what we've done but the truth and reality is that very little has been done systematically and deliberately by government or by ourselves to bring up the level of mental health in this part of the world," says Njenga. Read more: CNN African Voices

Tea earnings rise in 2011 on high prices

Kenya produced less tea in 2011 from the previous period due to adverse weather but earnings from the crop soared to 109 billion shillings, thanks to high prices and a weaker local currency against the dollar, the government said on Wednesday.

The world's largest exporter of black tea, the east African nation produced 377 million kg last year, down 5 percent from 399 million kg in the previous period, when it had earned 97 billion shillings from the crop. Read more: Reuters Africa

VirtualCity launches HewaniLife, Kenya’s first “local” mobile app store

December 1, 2011- Earlier this afternoon I attended VirtualCity’s launch of HewaniLife which is arguably Kenya’s first “local” mobile apps store and features over 400 mobile apps for download. HewaniLife has both local and international mobile apps for Android, Windows, Symbian, J2ME and BlackBerry. One can also download mobile apps from HewaniLife using not just the Internet but also via SMS and USSD.

The launch of HewaniLife also served as a platform for VirtualCity to showcase a good number of in-house developed apps for several vertical segment services in Distribution, Health, Education, Transport, Retail and Utilities being offered to the business community in Kenya. HewaniLife is unique in that it brings together various players in the mobile applications space and creates synergies for economic empowerment & development.
Source: http://www.moseskemibaro.com/2011/12/01/virtualcity-launches-hewanilife-kenyas-first-local-mobile-app-store/

Enormous potential has not yet been tapped

What’s good? What’s great? What’s the difference? These days, partly thanks to Jim Collins and his 2001 book Good to Great, no one can afford to be satisfied with just being ‘good’.

It sounds lame, unambitious, flat. It scores a mere 7/10. Today we must all burst with excitement and passion – delighting our customers by exceeding their expectations.

The difference between good and great varies by industry – and by country. Even within a given situation judgment differs depending on who’s doing the judging: one person’s great is another’s mere good – and for someone else a similar performance wouldn’t even be considered adequate. Then, in this fast changing and highly competitive world, what would have been considered great last year would fail to receive even the mildest applause today.

In Kenya we see too many organisations that consider adequacy to be more than good enough – certainly, as Sunny Bindra and Mike Eldon and others keep pointing out, when it comes to being responsive to customers.

Add in un-great leadership, un-great strategy, un-great innovation and un-great execution – and an un-great business environment thanks to un-great public service – and one understands why Kenya has not yet become a middle income country.

Yet there are so many great Kenyans.

And not a few great Kenyan organisations.

Read more at source: Business Daily

Kenyan, Burundi tea fetch highest prices at weekly Mombasa auction

Tea from Kenya and Burundi fetched the highest prices at the weekly Mombasa tea auction over the last 12 months. New data showed that of all the 12 countries participating at the auction, Kenyan and Burundian tea remained most popular in the year-to-date, recording premium prices compared to the rest. The average auction price of Kenyan tea stood at $3.01 per kilogramme at this month’s sale compared to $2.74 last October, marking a variance of $0.27 a kilo. read on: http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Kenyan+Burundi+tea+fetch+highest+prices+at+auction+/-/539546/1266392/-/53emmwz/-/index.html

Experts root for mapping technology to boost food production

As Raphael Orwa packs his tomatoes for sale in Kisumu, he is expecting at least Sh200,000 this season. His neighbours are also preparing other fresh produce like vegetables and fruits following a bumper harvest despite the dry season.The fresh produce growers from Mbita, Homa Bay County counts their gains, thanks to irrigation farming and adoption of modern technologies. For Mr Orwa, he says irrigating his farm with water from Lake Victoria has turned his three-acres land under tomato into a money spinner.

Mr Orwa is just one of thousands of small-scale farmers in Kenya who depend on their small plots of land to generate a sizable amount of income.  For many small-scale farmers, however, the story is not so good. Analysts say farmers have failed to embrace new technologies. One such technology that agriculturalists are rooting for is the geographic information system (GIS) mapping.
GIS is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyse, and present all types of geographically referenced data. When applied in Agriculture, GIS mapping is used to map out agricultural land in accordance to specific characteristics like soil texture, weather patterns, and prevalence of pests etc.This in turn provides farmers with crucial data that can greatly improve their yield read more: http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate+News/Experts+root+for+mapping+technology+to+boost+food+production+/-/539550/1266476/-/mx5b2s/-/index.html

It’s another vital step in reform of Judiciary

The inauguration of the Supreme Court on Wednesday marked another milestone in the evolution of the country’s governance system. It was the culmination of the reforms started several months ago, which began with the competitive and open recruitment of the top judicial officers and subsequent expansion of the courts and deployment of more judges and magistrates. Right from the onset, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, who is the President of the Supreme Court, underscored the fact that the institution must lead in revitalising the legal system and helping restore faith in the Judiciary. read on: http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Editorial/Its+another+vital+step+in+reform+of+Judiciary+/-/440804/1262182/-/n7kee0z/-/index.html