About 20 years ago, Edwin Kagombe was an ordinary rice hawker at Ngurubani town, Mwea, Kirinyaga County.
He used to hawk rice from village to village in the 90s before the sector was liberalised by the government.
“Hawking along the dusty streets of Ngurubani town was not easy but since I was aiming for the skies, I soldiered on,” he says.
Back then, the Mwea Irrigation Scheme was managed by the National Irrigation Board (NIB) that had a big say in the market. Kagombe would buy paddy rice from the farmers at Sh30 per kilo, mill it then sell at Sh75 per kilo. But years on, things have changed. Today, he says the cost of a kilo of paddy rice has gone up to Sh70.
The game changer came when the market was liberalised and NIB no longer had a monopoly.
As things improved, slowly by slowly Kagombe established himself in the business and now he is the proud owner of a Sh100 million rice mill —Tai Rice Millers. He also has a workforce of 20 employees and a godown which houses the mill. But its been a journey.
Loss after loss
He recalls how initially he used to make losses whenever a Passenger Service Vehicle would stop at the town and the passengers would ask to buy pishori rice only for them to speed off without paying.
To get money for the mill was not a walk in the park since all the financial institutions he approached wanted some collateral.
When he finally got the cash, the farmer, now in his early 60s, bought the machine from China, though he says Europe has better quality.
“If one has the finances and wants high quality mills, I would recommend machines from Britain and Germany but if you just want something functional at an affordable cost, China is the place to go,” he advises.
The size and the model of his mill can cost about Sh350 million in Britain and Germany while in China, it is just Sh100 million. The machine has a milling capacity of 30 metric tonnes a day.
“Yes Chinese goods might not be durable or high quality but they come in handy for entrepreneurs like us,” he says.
Though he has broken even, one of the biggest challenges he still faces is competition from cheap imports.
“The cheap Pakistan grain is dumped into a big store in Mwea always after every harvesting season since the sector was liberalised in 1998,” the trader says.
Afterwards, the pure Mwea pishori rice is used to blend the Pakistan one and offered to unsuspecting consumers at a much cheaper cost.
“The adulteration of the pure Mwea pishori with cheap imports has affected business and now consumers have become extra cautious,” he says.
Kagombe says it is a high time local farmers were protected from unfair market competition.
Cheap imports
At Ngurubani town alone, there 10 major rice mills and about 200 small ones owned by individuals. On the issue of cheap imports, the government insists the imports are necessary since Kenya has a huge deficit of the grain. Scheme manager Innocent Ariemba says since the country is only able to produce about 100,000 metric tonnes of rice against 400,000 metric tonnes national demand.
He has since asked farmers to redouble their efforts and produce more as the only sure way of blocking the cheap imports.
