- The plant will create over 1,000 direct and indirect jobs and ensure sustainability of smallholder farmers' livelihoods in the lake basin region
- This will be achieved through climate action, food security and wealth creation activities
Image: HILTON OTENYO
Construction of an organic fertiliser manufacturing plant in Mumias East constituency will start next week.
Kakamega Deputy Governor Ayub Savula said KPLC connected electricity to the site on Monday, paving the way for construction works to begin.
“The factory is expected to be complete by end of next year and start production. The organic fertiliser will supplement the subsidised chemical fertiliser supplied by the county government to farmers and increase food production,” he said.
The plant will create over 1,000 direct and indirect jobs and ensure sustainability of smallholder farmers' livelihoods in the lake basin region.
This will be achieved through climate action, food security and wealth creation activities.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 33 million smallholder farmers produce up to 80 per cent of the food locally available, but suffer the brunt of the ever growing impacts of inadequate access to agricultural inputs and degraded land productivity characterised by declining soil fertility and climate change.
The plant at Matawa area will manufacture organic fertiliser and animal protein from human waste, in the joint venture between the Government of Kakamega and the United States Agency for International Development.
Regen Organic's will build the 80,937 square metre plant, which will safely remove 36,000 tonnes of human waste annually and produce 7,000 tonnes of organic fertiliser annually.
Regen Organic Managing Director, Michael Lwoyelo, said operationalising the factory in Kakamega accelerates the company's five-year goal of supporting over 250,000 farmers to improve their livelihood via regenerative agriculture, creating 10,000 new green jobs, offsetting 500,000 tons of carbon and methane and safely removing 1 million tons of organic waste annually.
Image: HILTON OTENYO
The Kakamega factory will be the second of its kind in Kenya by Regen Organics. The company has operated in Kenya for over ten years.
The first, which is located in the outskirts of Nairobi, processes 60,000 tonnes of organic waste annually and utilises solar power and renewable fuels to produce 8,500 tonnes of organic fertiliser distributed in over 40 counties.
Groundbreaking for the project was done on May 23, 2023 by American Ambassador to Kenya, Meg Whitman.
"The launch of Regen Organics' manufacturing plant today in Kakamega county serves as a shining example of how governments and the private sector can come together to drive growth and create meaningful employment opportunities. I am thrilled to learn that this partnership will generate over 500 full-time, permanent jobs in Kakamega and the Western region over the next three years,” Whitman said during the launch.
She said the achievement will contribute significantly to economic prosperity of the region.
According to Regent Organic co-founder and President David Auerbach, the company’s robust technologies are ripe for scaling, not just in Kenya but throughout Africa and beyond.
Regen Organics seeks to address these challenges using a circular economy approach, which collects organic waste streams generated by cities and their environs and converts this into valuable inputs for productive farming: organic fertiliser for horticulture and staple crops, insect protein for livestock, and green energy for equipment.