7 unexploited investment opportunities in Kenya

1.  Agri-value addition (Agribusiness)

The Kenyan economy is essentially agri-based. If you look at every home; urban or rural, there is consumption of agricultural goods. Demand for food will always be there as the population increases.

Agri-business is therefore one of the biggest business ideas in Kenya. You cannot go wrong if you add value to agricultural produce and sell it. For example, instead of just selling milk, you could sell maziwa mala, yoghurt or cheese. It is also advisable to put your money in greenhouse farming instead of rain-dependent farming. Greenhouses are reliable because of drip water supply either from small, managed dams or borehole water.

2.  Equity or capital partnership

Having been an auditor for many years, I have seen people whose joint ventures have succeeded massively. When you have the money but you lack ideas, you can inject your money into an already established entities or investments such as schools, hospitals or hotels.

The aim is to share profits or dividends for an approved period of time until you recoup your initial cash outlay. There are people who have equity partnerships on available land, in real estate. For instance, if you own prime land but do not have enough money to invest you can invest a portion, while other investors inject the required amount of money for real estate.

In future, the proportional repayment for your cash injection may be that you will get the houses equivalent to what you put in. You can also sell the whole entity then you get your money back at a premium, that is interest.

3.  Skilled traders

It is unfortunate that Kenya is importing welders from China because they are skilled and can do more sophisticated work than the local ones. An investor can train young people in these specialised skills and have them offer these skills. In such skill trades, people are generally well paid and enjoy more satisfying careers.

There is a huge demand for talented workers. You pool them together, then when there is a demand for the particular skill, you dispatch them to that place. These skills are in carpentry, general construction, plumbing, pipe fitting, electrical and electronic control systems, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration, metal work and masonry.

4. Manufacturing

The vision of the government in the Big 4 is to increase the local manufacturing scope to 15 per cent by 2022. Currently, the manufacturing sector contributes 8.5 percent to the GDP. That is why we import even toothpicks. We need to produce locally.

We also import a lot in the areas of construction because we do not have sufficient industries for construction materials. Not much is required for one to inject capital to do this. Land and other resources are available, but it is just not a well tapped area.

5. Market of wheels (food trucks)

Countries like South Africa and Ghana have food trucks from which fast foods like burgers, chips and hotdogs are served.

There is no reason why good, healthy, nutritional food cannot be sold by mobile vendors as long as hygiene is observed. A good example is the milk ATM.

Mobile food vending is an area that young people can invest in without needing lots of capital.

6. Tourism

This is one of our country’s biggest foreign exchange earners, yet it is not as fully developed as in other countries. Small investors have the opportunity to make it grow through offering cheaper hotel bookings, Airbnb, well-trained tour guides, Maasai craft selling and promoting local tourism.

7. Vending machines

Kenyans are very busy people and many would want to buy goods quickly and move on to other exploits. We would do this if there were more vending machines for things such as water, milk, juice, soft drinks, doughnuts, cigarettes and even newspapers. In some countries you can even buy coffee from a vending machine. In Kenya, this would work with items sold in compact form, and the machines would be located at busy spots such as residential areas, near a busy bus terminus or in colleges and schools. They do not need a lot of money to start.