Kenya farmers hedge their losses with solar processing

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By David Njagi

Like thousands of farmers in arid Kenya, Jane Muthoni (pictured above) is aware inadequate rains lead to low yields. When there are prolonged rains however, farmers often struggle with production gluts.
For fresh produce farmers like her, low yields can mean she will not have enough harvests for the market. Production gluts on the other hand cause oversupply in the market leading to wastage of produce at the farm.
A local factory in the lowlands of Mt. Kenya region is however buying produce from farmers like Muthoni and processing it into into snacks, flour and soft drinks, using solar energy.
“Once we get the produce from farmers we just put it in the solar driers and it dries. Then we mill and pack it. It is that simple,” says the Sweet N’ Dried factory director, Mercy Mwende.

Kenya herders battle worsening climate with virtual weather stations

By David Njagi

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Sitting under a low tree to escape the simmering northern Kenya sun, a pair of youth keenly followed the activity that was going on in Kaltuma Milkalkona’s smart phone.
The young men in their early 20s were not excited by the latest sporting event transmitting from Milkalkona’s smart phone like most Kenyans of their age would be doing – nor was it the trending social media memes.
But it was the latest weather alert through the My Anga (my weather in English) app showing parts of their Merille village that will continue facing dry weather the coming week that stirred their interest.
It is for a good reason.
December 2020 ushered in the dry season there. In the last one month, day temperatures are rising to a high of 35 degrees Celsius. And just like the My Anga app warns, ‘pasture conditions are expected to be very poor with no grass and browse availability’. Climate change is worsening drought in northern Kenya.
And so, 25-year-old Amos Lardages, one of the youth, knows he must warn his elder brother who is away herding the family’s livestock in distant villages where there is pasture and water, not to come home yet.
“When I get the weather alerts I usually show the people who are close to me. I also call the people I know from distant villages to inform them on the weather situation that has been shared through the app,” said Milkalkona, who is also a clothes trader in neighbouring Laisamis town.
The 42-year-old-mother of four said My Anga app has helped women in northern Kenya prepare for looming drought better by for instance, stocking food ahead of the disaster.
She said before the app was introduced, mothers used to walk long distances where the herds were grazing to fetch goat milk for their children. This is because families never used to know how to prepare for drought due to lack of weather information.
“When there was rain, children had enough milk because the goats grazed nearby. But when there was drought the children missed school because they had to accompany their mothers to distant grazing grounds to fetch the milk,” she said.
More than 500 herders in northern Kenya have enlisted with the My Anga service, but over 2,000 more benefit indirectly through shared weather information within communities, Franklin Agola, the co-founder and director at Amfratech Ltd, a Nairobi based social enterprise, said.
A user can easily download and interact with the mobile application which transmits in English, Kiswahili and northern Kenya local languages, said Agola, adding that it is available in android and IOS versions.
For Kenyans who do not have a smart phone, there is a short message service which shares the weekly weather alerts available. All one needs to do is subscribe to the toll free number, 22840.
“It is a simple process where a user sends the local administrative ward name. A feedback message is then sent to assist in registration allowing the user to select the language through which they would want to receive the short message service,” said Agola.
He said there is also the web dashboard http://www.climark.org, which national and county government officials as well as NGOs can access this weather information.
Aiming to impact over more than 300,000 pastoralists in Kenya in the next five years, Amfratech works with four partners, through the Climate Livestock and Markets (CLIMARK) platform.
The partner institutions include, the Technical Center for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA), global techie, aWhere, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Kenya Livestock Marketing Council (KLMC).
The weather information is sourced through virtual weather stations placed at nine by nine kilometers of cyber space across the globe by aWhere, said Agola.
These help collect and disseminate weather information based on three indices. They include moisture availability index, rainfall index, and drought index, he said.
“Weather is a big issue for pastoralists and all of us in northern Kenya. In case of an emergency like prolonged drought pastoralists need to know where they can take their animals for pasture and water,” said Mamo Jarso, a health worker at the Laisamis sub county hospital.
Mamo, who also owns a herd of livestock and has subscribed to the My Anga app said previously communities there used to send scouts who would walk up to 120 kilometers from home and back looking for pasture and water when drought set in.
This would take days before the scouts brought back word that they had found water and pasture. By that time, some livestock would be dead while others were too emaciated to journey to the thriving grazing land.
“My Anga app is with me every time. I can check weather updates on my phone anytime and share the forecasts with those who do not have for the whole Marsabit and Isiolo counties,” he said.
He said the app also helps the community know where the herds and their shepherds are, because they will have journeyed to known grazing land.
This helps in giving veterinary services to ailing animals as well as immunizing the herds against disease outbreaks, he said.
For Daniel Kapana however, My Anga app is not reaching as many pastoralists as it should. One reason is because few have a smart phone. The other is because some places have poor communication network.
Yet another is because many more pastoralists do not know how to read and write, said the chairman of the Merille livestock market.
Even for those who receive the short message service weather alerts, they have to look for someone learned in the village to read it for them, he said.
“The system should be upgraded to enable a large majority of pastoralists to access weather information,” said Kapana, meaning the use of easy to read media like infographics and illustrations translating the alerts for the illiterate.

Cheaper energy is key to unlocking Kenya’s industrial might

By David Njagi

The latest confirmation by Energy Principal Secretary, Joseph Njoroge that renewable energy now accounts for more than 93 per cent of the entire electricity that we use in Kenya is an indication that the country is making headways towards a green economy.

It is a state that many Kenyans expect will lower the cost of energy. Yet all indications are that energy consumption is not likely to become affordable to struggling Kenyans any time soon, going by the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) furtive moves.

Some industry leaders have come forward to articulate what the private sector is doing in collaboration with the government, to widen and cheapen the country’s energy mile.

But what is clear is that high energy prices are undermining the entrepreneurial spark and scaring away investors. This is not good for the government’s ‘big four’ agenda.

Making energy affordable can however be good and spur the country’s industrial growth, if the government seriously invested in the other ‘big four’ renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, biogas and geothermal.

Although Kenya is making renewable energy footprints with the 300 megawatt wind project, countries like Rwanda and Morocco are racing ahead by harvesting the sun.

For instance, Rwanda’s 8.5 megawatt solar power plant was completed in just over a year. It has increased the country’s electricity generation by six per cent, powering more than 15,000 homes.

Having established its 160 megawatt Noor I and 200 megawatt Noor II solar projects, Morocco is set to start reaping from its 150 megawatt Noor III energy feed any time soon.

In both cases, Rwanda and Morocco have demonstrated that establishing grid connected renewable energy generation is the way to go for Africa to make the next industrial leap, while also meeting international climate change obligations.

For appetite for renewables is accelerating at a pace that has forced the oil and gas sectors to rethink their business positioning in an ever energy hungry planet.

Demand for wind turbines and solar panels have brought down the costs of renewables, as innovations resulted in 2016 being named the peak year for green energy. More than half of the new energy generated worldwide was from renewables.

However, all is not cloudy for Kenya, if plans to expand the country’s power pool through the Scaling Up Renewable Energy Program (SREP), is anything to go by.

According to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), 46.5 per cent of the country’ power sources are from hydro, 15.5 per cent from geothermal, 1.3 per cent from bagasse, while wind contributes 0.3 per cent.

It is troubling to note that solar generation is missing from this line up. In a country that sits on the equator, enjoying a balanced supply of sunshine, Kenya should have taken the Rwanda and Morocco path long before its neighbours discovered there is treasure in the sun.

Optimism is high that the country is making headways towards a middle income economy, through President Uhuru Kenyatta’s led manufacturing, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and food security, growth benchmarks.

But studies in countries that have been in our situation shows it took them the realization that making energy affordable was the key to unlocking their industrialization door knob, to achieve their visions.

It all started in the beginning of the millennia when Germany decided to make its energy transition from ‘dirty’ to ‘clean’ power sources.

After Energiewende was born, subsidizing its green energy revolution two decades ago, 32 per cent of Germany’s energy pool powering its industries today is generated from renewables.

Fast growing and industrializing countries like China and India have picked the German green energy trailblazer.

China’s economic muscle is ever bulging after placing renewables as a strategic driver of its industry. It now boasts a third of the planet’s wind power capacity and a quarter of global solar power.

India is following closely. In 2016, it built one of the largest solar photovoltaic farms, and scores fourth as the world’s biggest wind power producer.

As some of Kenya’s leading trading partners, perhaps it is time our leadership borrowed a leaf from India and China.

For our country is endowed with volumes of wind and sun, not forgetting the acres of agricultural, municipal and industrial waste which can make megawatts of biogas.

Besides, Kenya has a climate change law, which can inspire the transition to renewables, driven by a genuine global green energy movement.

Powered by this silver lining, the government should enable the creation of renewable energy markets to accommodate private investments in micro and mini grids.

It should for instance, encourage the trading of clean energy at the bourse and transactions through emerging technologies like block chain payment systems.


While President Kenyatta has set the pace for invention in clean energy with the ‘big four’ agenda, green power appears to be the solution to making energy affordable in Kenya.

Slow electric cars takeoff worries Kenyan investors

By David Njagi

When the government imposed a 16 percent value added tax on all petroleum products in September 2018, Kenyan motorists read this as a new scandal in the making. But Mercy Wambui saw the policy change as an opportunity for the transport sector to transition into clean energy.
She was right. Two years down the line, electric cars have joined the list of motor engines riding Kenyan roads. This, she says, is a great stride towards reducing harmful emissions released into the environment by fossil fuel powered vehicles.
“The future of Kenya is electric vehicles because they are environmentally friendly. They do not pollute the air and so they give us better health. They do not have exhaust pipes, are purely electric and noise pollution is zero,” says Wambui, a sales agent working for Metilab Ltd, a renewable energy company in Nairobi.
It is understandable that Kenya is joining the list of countries rushing for the piece of electric car pie. Not only are they zero rated by the government, but UN bodies have raised alarm over increased air pollution in world cities due to continued use of fossil fuel driven cars.
In Nairobi alone, a keen observer standing on the northern edge of the capital at dawn will notice the thick skyline hanging over the city. Studies say most of this is composed of harmful compounds emitted by vehicles, like sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide.
Going green in the transport sector has a business edge to it. According to Kenya Bureau of Statistics consumer price indices 2018 report, gas and other petroleum products increased by 2.5 percent and could keep on rising.
The year on year inflation of the same products increased significantly by 16.7 percent over the same period. And this could be one of the reasons there is increasing appetite towards electric cars, argues Wambui.
“Once a customer buys an electric car they do not need to worry about fuel. All they need to do is drive to a charging station and get their car reenergized,” she says, adding that her company has been selling electric Nissan Eves since 2017.
For instance, she says, the Nissan Eve has two charging ports, where there is a normal charging port and a quick charging port.
A normal charging port takes about eight hours to be fully charged, but it is going to achieve 100 percent charge. A quick charging port takes 30 minutes but charges up to 80 percent, she adds.
“Currently we have six charging stations. One is at our offices in Karen and the other is at UN Environment headquarters. We have also installed electric chargers at homes of customers who have embraced electric cars. Charging is free,” she says.
Experts say use of electric vehicles will save Kenyans 70 percent of their revenue in terms of fuel consumption. Peter Kamau, a taxi operator in the city agrees.
According to him, he spends about Ksh. 2,000 to fuel his car for a round trip around the city, which is about 25 per cent of his daily income.
“I am saving to buy an electric car taxi because there are no costs in terms of fuel,” he says, adding that by the end of 2019 he will have purchased several of them.
But the silver lining should not obscure the cloud. While electric car models currently in Kenya can only travel 130 kilometers before exhausting their charge, uptake of the technology is still low, according to Wambui.
She links this attitude to fear of responding to change among Kenyans, but is certain this will evolve over time.
“The technology is good and nice but there is no one to initiate the process. We are the people initiating the process, trying to get the right people to come and help us so that we can promote the concept,” she says.
Other companies dealing with electric vehicles in Kenya include Ecoride Africa with its Nopia electric car, and Knights App Ltd. which is promoting solar powered vehicles.
Experts estimate there will be over 1,500 vehicles in Kenya by 2021.

Kenya start ups switch to briquettes to cut power costs

By David Njagi

When Mercy Ogwan was growing up the very mention of human poo in public was taboo. These days however, she is learning there is wealth to be made from filth.

Ogwan is an employee of Sanivation Ltd., a waste to energy company based in Naivasha. In the two years they have been operational making briquettes from human waste, energy consumption has assumed a new level: industrial use.

As energy costs continue to rise in Kenya, new innovations that reduce the cost of doing business are taking the country by storm. One of these is making charcoal briquettes from human waste.

A government led campaign aimed at reducing deforestation too, has seen many households and industries switch from firewood use to recycled briquettes.

“We use human waste to make these briquettes so that consumers can use them in place of fire wood and charcoal,” says Ogwan.

According to her, appetite for these briquettes for home and industrial consumption is on the rise, and is expected to keep doing so due to its smart approach to business and the environment.

For instance, she says, her company generates 100 tons of briquettes per month, but even this quantity is not enough to meet the high demand by consumers.

There are clients who consume 30 tons of the briquettes per day, but her company is not able to meet this demand, she says.

“We are overwhelmed by demand. Sometimes the demand is so high that we are not even able to supply. There are industries that have been using firewood but they have embraced the idea of briquettes and are doing away with firewood,” says Ogwan.

Ogwan’s company makes log briquettes for industrial use, while the disc briquettes are sold to domestic users.

But the price ranges from Ksh. 14 to Ksh. 17 per kilo depending on the type of consumer and the quantity being bought, she says.

There is an environmental edge too. The raw materials to make the briquettes are supplied by the Naivasha municipality free of charge.

Human waste that used to be dumped in Lake Naivasha now ends up at Ogwan’s company where they separate the liquid from solid waste and treat it before disposing, she says.

According to Lydia Muchiri, the senior advisor on gender and energy at Practical Action, East Africa, the use of briquettes is not only creating jobs for women and the youth, but it is also reducing deforestation.

For instance, she says, for every tonne of briquettes used to power industrial production, about 25 trees are saved from the axe.

“Economic growth is very important for this country. But it must not be at the risk of environmental degradation. The use of human waste briquettes does both and more because it reduces environmental pollution, reduces the cutting of trees, and creates new business opportunities,” says Muchiri.

According to the 2016 poor people’s energy outlook report, 69 per cent of Kenyans use firewood, while 13 per cent prefer using charcoal.

Simon Munywe, the Director at the Kayole Environment Management Enterprise, says reducing the cutting of trees helps in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Ogwan says her company is planning to diversify their operations in Malindi and Kisumu Counties.

“It has been an amazing season. We are very proud and I think there is a bright future as far as briquettes and the environmental aspect is concerned,” she says.

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Flower farms join the rush for the biogas pie

By David Njagi
A public-private partnership between the government and flower farms in Kenya is reducing the cost of energy by turning farm waste into biogas.
According to John Maina, senior assistant director, renewable energy, Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, the partnership has been able to reduce reliance on the national grid for electricity by 10 percent, when flower farms turn farm waste into biogas.
And the process is simple, says Maina, adding that flower waste is shredded and then filled into a hydrolysis tank for digestion.
After digestion, the effluent gets into the digester in liquid form, while the leftovers are collected in a hydrolysis tank. The biogas is used as electricity while the effluent is used as compost manure in the farms.
“We took that initiative and shared with the Kenya Flower Council. They gave us nominees who were interested to partner with the government. We helped them put up structures, a biogas digester, a generator and electrical accessories,” says Maina.
According to the Kenya Rural Electrification Master Plan 2007, flower farms can generate about 20 megawatts of energy every year from farm waste.
One of the flower farms in Thika working with the government is able to generate 55 kilowatts of energy from farm waste every month, while another in Isinya generates 100 kilowatts.
The digester in the Isinya farm has a capacity of 400 cubic meters or 400,000 liters, while the one in Thika has 200 cubic meters or 200,000 litres capacity.
Santosh Kulkarni, the general manager of PJ Fave flowers Ltd. in Isinya says not only has the initiative helped reduce operational costs, it has also helped reduce farm waste.
At the same time, the leftovers of the anaerobic digestion have been able to generate 20 percent of the fertilizer used in the farm as organic manure, says Kulkarni.
“It is a simple but smart technology. We do not have to worry about blackouts because we have spare energy which we can use at the farm,” he says.
Studies show that the use of biogas has a large impact on conventional fuel consumption, and results in immediate financial savings.
According to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi County alone can make Ksh. 13.5 billion every year from biogas generation, through waste recycling, both at the industrial and farm level.
Although accumulation of solid and liquid waste is said to be the highest in cities like Nairobi, the potential for economic growth through biogas generation is a window that can change rural Counties’ fortunes.
This is because biogas energy holds the promise of cutting the use of biomass like firewood, which puts lots of pressure on Kenya’s forest cover.
Presently, over 90 per cent of Kenya’s rural population rely on biomass, which include wood, charcoal, and agricultural waste, to meet their energy needs.
Meanwhile, the Center for Energy Efficiency and Cogeneration (CEEC) at the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) is engaging counties to create awareness on the importance of renewable energy projects, and would go ahead to consult for finances to back such investments.
The challenge however, is making the projects presentable to financial institutions. But once the feasibility of the projects is done, KAM promises support in handing over to financial partners, says David Njugi, an official at KAM.
“We are hoping all the flower farms are going to take up this initiative so that we can be able to take care of the waste in the farms,” says Maina.

Innovators urge government to tame renewable energy predators

By David Njagi

Our future

George Otieno has five renewable energy patents, but he has nothing to show for it. He is not about to quit searching for the elusive justice however.
Otieno’s innovations are in the green energy, water, construction and agriculture sectors, but like hundreds of innovators in Kenya, he is a victim of patent theft.
He has hired lawyers several times to argue his case in court, but they all end up being bribed out of the case by the corporate organization he accuses of stealing his patents.
“That is why I am appealing to the government to intervene and listen to the difficulties we go through as innovators,” says Otieno, who is also a member of the Kenya Renewable Energy Association (KREA).
According to the Kenya Copyright Board (KCB), Copyright law seeks to preserve the rights of artistic creators and protect the expression of ideas.
But these rights may occasion a legal and practical challenge when they overlap, argues Paul Kaindo, writing on the Board’s web page.
It is not clear if these overlaps are the ones causing Otieno’s delayed justice.
But Joseph Kimani, the founder of JOKIMA Renewable Saving Energy company from Kiambu County argues that corruption is so deeply entrenched in the justice system that Kenya’s copyright laws favour corporates and not the real innovators.
“The Government helps us a lot in terms of innovation. But when you try to seek justice for patent theft you are on your own,” says Kimani.
And that is why Otieno is smiling. Even after the back breaking effort to research and develop his innovations, he has not earned a single coin from them.
This could explain why many technical innovators in the renewable energy sector are preferring to relocate to developed countries to promote their work there, argues Otieno.
“Innovation in Kenya should have strong legal protection. This is because it does not only benefit us financially, but it also serves the society in the long term,” he says.
Yet, government arms like the Climate Change Directorate argue that Kenyans like Otieno are protected by the Kenya Green Economy Strategy and Implementation Plan 2018-2020, which is informed by among others, the need for technology development, innovation and transfer.
Besides, the 2018-2022 National Climate Change Action Plan seeks to set aside Ksh. 11 billion to support technology and innovation and how these skills can be transferred to average Kenyans, argues Charles Mutai at the Directorate.
“The Plan also seeks to ensure that Kenya enhances the use of renewable energy. We are working with other national agencies to promote innovations in this area,” says Mutai.
Meanwhile, Otieno says protecting the renewable energy sector from corporate predators will fast track the transition from fossil fuels.
“The legal system needs to be clean so that there can be an innovation boom in the renewable energy sector. Kenyans should be careful not to be trapped in the get rich quick syndrome,” he says.
The Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI) is another government agency that deals with issues of intellectual property rights.
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Kenyans square off lifestyle diseases with bunny meat

By David Njagi

GILGIL, KENYA: Disease was still eating away Stephen Ngare Kiige when an evangelist tipped him that he could redeem his ailing health by trying a dish of rabbit meat.
Not only did he discover the healing delicacies hidden within the rodent, but he could also rejig the family’s ebbing fortunes through rabbit farming.
A row of neat hutches at his rural home in Gilgil is a stark contrast to the main house built with rusting iron sheets, but speaks of the seriousness with which the 54-year-old farmer takes his present occupation.
Inside the structures, some 60 breeds of California white, Ear lop, and New Zealand white, are nibbling away fresh foliage of vegetables and weeds that Kiige placed there this morning.
In three months time, they will have fed enough to make a mouth watering dish for some patron somewhere, as the high prices of beef and its alleged link to diseases such as arthritis continue to scare away consumers.
“This is my seventh year as a rabbit farmer,” says the father of four. “There are many butcheries now selling rabbit meat because it is cheap and is said to have low cholesterol.”
Health science defines cholesterol as a lipid fat produced by the liver and has many useful functions in the body, but if in high levels, it can cause effects such as heart attacks and stroke, among others, according to the Ministry of Public Health, Kenya.
But what causes high cholesterol? The Division of Nutrition in the Ministry lists poor nutrition, sedentary lifestyle, body weight, smoking and alcohol as some of the known causes.
For instance, where nutrition is identified as a cause, foods such as cakes, hard cheese, pastry, sausages and red meat, among others, reportedly have saturated fats, which lead to high cholesterol.
“Children and expectant mothers face the greatest risk of lifestyle diseases,” warns Dr. Brigitte Monda, an obstetrician and gynecologist practicing in Nairobi. “Yet society continues to be ignorant of this emerging threat that is facing us.”
It is easy to figure out why ignorance is still deeply ingrained in the African culture. According to Dr. Monda, the society associates the obese with wealth and civility, a stereotype that has ensnared many into the lifestyle diseases trap.
But even as health flees through the window when wealth comes through the door, disease appears to have defied such stereotypes. Both the rich and poor are getting a fair share of the burden in equal measure, studies say.
For instance, the Division of Nutrition estimates that over two million people and about 25,000 children live with diabetes, while a study by PLOS One indicates that the burden of hypertension in rural Kenya is about 23.7 per cent.
Meanwhile, the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) lists heart diseases, stroke and depression among the leading causes of disease burden in sub Saharan Africa.
“The African Union is in the process of developing a food security and nutrition policy due to the rising burden of lifestyle diseases,” explained Andrew Edewa, the food safety officer at the AU Inter African Bureau for Animal Resources, during a regional meeting on food security in Nairobi.
Kiige knows the costs of such a burden.
“I was a diabetes patient in 2004,” he recalls. “When I went for treatment I was advised to eat white meat and do a lot of exercises. I have recovered but I make sure I have a meal of rabbit meat every week.”
During the just ended festive season alone, he made some Ksh. 40, 000 from selling the rodents, he says, each at a cost of Ksh. 200 per kilogramme, way down compared to the Ksh. 340 that an equal amount of beef fetches.
All the 36 members of the GODVIKA social enterprise group representing three villages of Ngong’, View Point, Diatomite and Kanyawa, and to which he belongs, agree rabbit farming is gaining acceptance.
Lately, the group is the envy of neighbours who are yet to be convinced that Rabbit farming could be an alternative means of livelihood, besides toiling all day in farms only fit to be sown with crops such as millet, sorghum and castor.
In between homesteads fenced with euphoria and cactus, bushy pathways snake their way towards the shores of Lake Elementaita, where those who have given up on farming will be found harvesting diatomite, a mineral that has been overexploited.
“Competition with bigger companies and other villagers means I cannot make enough income to meet my family’s daily sustenance,” moans Peter Nene a small time diatomite miner. “Government authorities are also restricting us from encroaching on the lake because it has been drying up.”
But studies by the Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Agribusiness Project (KAPAP) indicates that as the food crisis fans out among the poor, it may find more optimists like Kiige, and fewer pessimists like Nene.
In the seven years that Kiige has been into rabbit farming, Africa had lost land the size of Kenya due to corruption and climate change, according to studies, which conclude that this is a growing setback to subsistence agriculture.
“But it only takes a small space to rear rabbits compared to bigger livestock,” argues Alice Mburu, a service provider with KAPAP. “During the three months it takes for a rabbit to mature, a calf will still be suckling.”
The promise that this emerging practice holds is seen in the trade routes that export the product to South Africa, Sudan and Egypt, but lack of veterinary doctors and extension services remains a challenge.
“We are supporting farmers by introducing them to superior varieties and building for them breeding structures,” says Samuel Waweru, whose livestock department works in collaboration with Egerton and Nairobi universities.

How to treat your seed and make it ready for planting

By David Njagi

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The purpose of any seed treatment is to improve its performance. If you are a farmer struggling to generate the right seed for planting M.A. Mushira of CIMBRIA takes you through the process of treating your seed from harvesting to planting.
After seed is harvested, there are equipments that do all operations required on that seed material to make it suitable for planting.
Shelling
The first stage in seed processing is shelling or threshing the seed material. This is done with shelling machines. But the other seed material may not require shelling because they are threshed.
Normally, seed is harvested at moisture content that is a little bit higher than the required safety levels for storage.
Hence, material for shelling must be done on machines that are properly selected, set and adjusted, so that during shelling, the seed material is not damaged, either externally or internally.
Drying
After the seed is shelled, it has to be dried so that the moisture content of the seed material is safe for its subsequent storage and processing.
Drying is done either by exposing to the sun or by artificial driers. The sun can be used to dry seed but it is important to harvest it at the right moisture content.
This is because sun drying, if not carefully handled can lead to over-drying of the seed, which can be damaged during shelling.
The seed is harvested when it has a moisture content of around 18 percent. In such a case, a farmer requires artificial drying to reduce the moisture content after shelling.
In all the drying arrangements, temperature level is important. Grain is usually dried at low temperatures.
For maize and other cereal crops, the temperature range should be between 13 degrees Celsius and 13.5 degrees Celsius so that the grain is safe for storage.
But drying temperature alone is not important. What is most important is the kernel temperature during drying.
This is because if the temperature is too high, it can destroy the germination capability of the seed.
For example, for maize, the kernel temperature must not exceed 43 degrees Celsius. For wheat, it must not exceed 43 degrees Celsius to 49 degrees Celsius. For barley it must not exceed 49 degrees Celsius.
Storage
After grain is dried, the next operation in post harvest handling of grain is storage.
This is necessary so that the grain can be stored safely for subsequent operations. The store must be clean, safe and free from moisture.
The pre cleaned dry grain which is stored safely can now be drawn and processed into seed.
Fine cleaning
The most important operation that follows includes fine cleaning. This makes sure that the grain is free from any impurities.
Any dust or foreign material must be removed so that the seed is of very high purity. After the seed has been fine cleaned, it can then be sorted and graded.
Grading is separating the seed into different quality factions.
Separating of the seed depends on physical characteristics, like length, weight, thickness, colour, and specific weight, among others.
Seed treating and packaging
After the seed has been graded, sorted and fine cleaned, the next operation is seed treating and packaging.
Seed treating is where the cleaned seed is dressed with a chemical that helps to prevent disease and pest attack on the seed before planting.
Equipment
There is a whole range of equipment for doing fine cleaning, grading and sorting.
For example for fine cleaning, farmers should use flat screen cleaners or the delta cleaners. These use screen and air.
The screens are also oscillating with the machine to make sure very fine precision cleaning is obtained for the seed.
For grading, equipments like gravity separator, cylindrical cylinders, destoners, among others, are used.
These are rather conventional machines for grading and sorting seed.
Nowadays, there are optical machines to help in grading and sorting. The optical machine is mainly a colour sorter which can also be used to separate seed according to either, colour, shade or shape.
There are conventional equipment for seed treating which are drum like with a screw conveyor for mixing the seed with the chemical.
The latest addition to this range of seed treating equipment is the centricoater.
The centricoater is a new invention which is good for all types of seed and can use all types of chemicals that are in slurry form, powder form, or even for pelleting or coating the seed.
The centricoater has the advantage in that it uses resources like water and chemicals very efficiently.
It is very accurate in its operations because it uses a Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) based system for weighing, treating and discharging the seed from the seed treater.
It is the ultimate seed treater at the moment. It can do both bulge seed treating or continuous seed treating, meaning it can be a continuous line for seed production.
Where you can get equipment
CIMBRIA supplies a whole range of equipment for doing fine cleaning, grading and sorting.
Overall, CIMBRIA has the capacity for designing, manufacturing, and supplying seed plants on a timely basis, or individual machines for specific operations in the seed line.
The focus for all equipment supplied by CIMBRIA is to make sure that seed is handled gently with minimum wastage and dust emissions to the atmosphere in order to cause minimum impact to the environment.
CIMBRIA manufactures artificial driers, and this can be used either for shelled maize or for maize still on cob.
M.A. Mushira is the Area sales manager at CIMBRIA East Africa Ltd. His contacts are:
Mobile: +254 722 374 329
E-mail: info@cimbria.co.ke

Obabi, poll violence, and elusive justice

By David Njagi

Gladys Nanjala Obabi is pleased with the growing calls for a peaceful General Election in August this year. S

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he would like the message to be taken a step further.
Obabi is a survivor of sexual violence that rocked the country during the 2007/08 Post Election Violence (PEV). But justice has never been served for the suffering she and her family have gone through.
“It all started at my business premises in Chwele, Bungoma County,” recalls the mother of four. “A group of men forced their way into my shop and started taking my stock. I protested and screamed for help. They raped me.”
Sympathizers found her lying on the floor of her shop half dead. The assailants had stolen all her stock after beating her and knocking off her teeth, she says.
“I suffered a serious back injury. I could not get treatment because the hospitals were not working,” she says, adding that the Sabaot Land Defence Forces (SLDF) had threatened to kill any medic found treating survivors of the violence.
Her woes would not end there. When sympathizers took her home, she found the SLDF assailants had raided it and killed her husband.
“They even raped my eldest daughter,” says Obabi. “She got pregnant and now she has to raise a child without a father.”
After weighing the situation, Obabi was forced to move with her family to Silisia to start a new life.
But life became even more difficult there. She was jobless. Even for the lighter jobs she was offered like weeding in a farm, she could not sustain them for long because her back injury still affected her output.
“After doing a little work, I could not sleep at night. My whole body would be in pain,” she says, adding that she was reduced to begging.
Over the years, she started getting sick. When her cousin took her to hospital in 2012, she was diagnosed with HIV.
Obabi says there is nothing she can do about the assailants. But her greatest rage is with the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC).
According to her, TJRC has failed in its search for justice for survivors of sexual violence during the 2007/08 PEV.
“They (TJRC) are jokers,” she says. “They have summoned us many times to give our testimonies but nothing has been done about it. We are still suffering.”
When TJRC reached out to survivors in 2008, she says, they convinced her and others that they were collecting evidence so that they could seek compensation and restitution for the affected families.
“TJRC has wasted us because it has not fulfilled any of its promises yet we used our time to give testimonials,” she says. “I wish they could have left us to form a movement of survivors in Kenya seeking justice.”
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) acknowledges the state has abandoned survivors of the 2007/08 poll violence.
According to ICTJ official, Christopher Gitari, the government does not want to admit this group of Kenyans exists.
Yet, the government promised that it ‘will not rest’ until every PEV survivor has been compensated, argues a statement by the survivors of sexual violence in Kenya issued in June this year, calling for a peaceful election.
“Victims of sexual violence are neglected and ignored by the government,” argues Gitari. “Even the communities where they come from have abandoned them.”
In the statement, the group is calling on the government to operationalize the Ksh. 10 billion Restorative Justice Fund, to ensure survivors of past human rights violations are offered redress, including those who have suffered sexual violence.
It also wants the government to issue a code of conduct guiding security operations and deployments during the polls, and publicly declare security agents will desist from violating civilians.
“It is ironical that survivors of poll violence are victimized by the government yet perpetrators of violence are not prosecuted,” argues Wangu Kanja, a lead official with the movement.
Cyprian Nyamwamu, the director, Future of Kenya Foundation, argues that the state has failed to create reforms to enable it prevent poll violence directed at women.
“Civilized governments restore people affected by poll violence first before they make policy to prevent future conflict,” said Nyamwamu.
For now, Obabi, who belongs to the survivors of sexual violence in Kenya movement, would be happy if the government helped her family with just food. But even that basic need has proved elusive.
“We stand here to remind the government that justice for survivors of sexual violence is still an unfinished business,” says the statement. “The longer it takes to address the issue of accountability, the more survivors continue to suffer.”