Benedetta Nangila: Fortunes in Fodder
Benedetta Nangila started growing fodder on a small section of her family’s farm in Bungoma County in Western Kenya in 2018. At first, cultivating Brachiaria grass was simply a way to pay for a diploma in business management from Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology. Benedetta soon discovered that demand for the tropical perennial foliage with a high nutritional value was strong, and soon she was farming more than two hectares.
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Her success hit a snag with COVID-19. “Early in 2020, coronavirus hit just when I was harvesting my grass. I lost quite a lot of business as customers were not buying. I had managed to get some orders from other counties but then the government instituted movement restrictions,” she says. 2
Like so many entrepreneurs around the world, Benedetta had to adapt. Fortunately, Benedetta had the training to do so, thanks in no small part to her participation in Cultivate Africa’s Future (CultiAF) training program, which is overseen by the Global Agribusiness Management and Entrepreneurship (GAME) Center at the United States International University-Africa (USIU-A). Trained on record-keeping, budgeting, financial management, entrepreneurship skills, ICT, mentorship and how to expand a business, and armed with a diploma, Benedetta had the confidence to explore how she could diversify into other ventures to bolster her earnings.
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Her solution: rabbits. She now raises and sells rabbits to NGOs for distribution to various projects, to universities for research, and local hotels and retailers for consumption. In a good month, she is able to earn CAD$500. Benedetta also trains and mentor about 200 local youths on fodder management and production, and runs a financial scheme where she sells grass cuttings to youth on credit, which they later repay in cash or by selling her their fodder harvest at a subsidized rate.
She says the training she received from the CultiAF project has taught her how to manage her finances and create a business community. “They also taught us how to approach other financiers like banks and microfinance institutions for funding, so I have been mobilizing other foliage farmers on forming an association that would give us bargaining power when approaching these financial institutions,” she enthuses. With funding, she hopes to be able to expand the area under foliage cultivation, and add value to her rabbit business by making sausages, and selling rabbit fur and other by-products like urine and manure. 4