Pastoralist takes livestock selling online

A few years ago, it was unimaginable that one could sell live goats or their meat online. 

Slowly, livestock selling in the country is moving to digital marketplaces. Access to the market will soon be no longer tedious and riddled with middlemen.

This has seen the emergence of e-commerce websites such as Mbuzi 24 that seeks to automate the livestock trade.

Adam Lekanaiya, the Head of Sales at the start-up told Enterprise that his personal experience herding goats as a child inspired his passion to see the automation of livestock selling and make it more seamless for herders, traders, butchers and consumers of goat meat.

"As a village Masai boy in Kajiado, I grew up with livestock for the better part of my early childhood. I saw buyers troop into our homestead to buy goats and other livestock which they’d take to the slaughterhouse to resell to butcheries, who’d then sell to end consumers,” he recalled.

"Over time, I feel that process has made much damage to the herders and we should now think of better ways to maximize returns and deliver value to the consumers and create opportunities to people like boda boda riders who deliver the products."

The digital marketplace for goats, as a priority, works off a web app where the goat farmers can sign up, list their products and get buyers in real-time. All the client needs to do is make payment upon placing orders and deliveries are done.

But with this challenges still abound. He revealed that there is a little slow uptake of the platform among farmers, even though the uptake among potential clients is on the rise.

"I guess we just need to do a little more sensitisation among farmers to show them how this application seeks to empower them,” he said.

Mbuzi 24 strives to offer quality meat, in accordance with public health laws and also, meat sold through their platform is Halal, making it consumable for all.

"We do an analysis on the clients that sign up on our platform to ascertain that they are actually selling goat meat and not any other meat. We check the health situation of the meat and partner with veterinaries for animal health and extension services, just to ensure we deliver quality," he said. 

After pioneering with goat meat sales online, they want to venture into other meat products like chicken, beef, mutton and veal.