Reuben Kabui: Teacher Making Money From Adding Value To Pumpkins, Cassava By Making Nutritious Porridge Flour

Reuben Kabui is a primary school teacher from Kihuti in Mukurwe-ini, Nyeri County.

Since 2016, he has been doing value addition of green bananas, pumpkins, cassava and millet to make flour.

Kabui ventured into the industry to save local farmers from exploitation from brokers and create job opportunities.

Here is his story as told by WoK.

While growing up, Kabui saw people from his village trek for kilometers carrying loads of produce to the market on their backs.

Unfortunately for them, brokers had infiltrated the market and they would sell their produce at throwaway price.

“At worst, they would cover kilometers on foot but end up not selling anything or if lucky, sold them for peanuts,” he said.

In an interview with Standard, Kabui noted that his dream was to come up with a better offer for the farmers, saving them from the brokers.

Years down the line, he ventured into value addition and as such providing market for hundreds of farmers in his locality.

He set up a cottage industry in his village where he has been doing value addition of cassava, green bananas, pumpkins and millet.

Kabui underwent value addition lessons at Wambugu ATC where he took a short course in agro-processing.

For the past 7 years, he has been making porridge flour dubbed Afya Chap Chap.

While starting off, he would do 90 kilograms of flour per day, but over the years he has been able to increase his production to 800 kilograms per day.

As of 2019, the venture earned him between Ksh 50,000 to Ksh 100,000 per month.

He distributes his porridge flour to supermarkets and other outlets in central, parts of Eastern and parts of Rift Valley and Nairobi.

Production

For pumpkins, once they arrive at the production unit, they are washed, sliced into small pieces, dried and ground into powder.

On the other hand, green bananas sliced into small pieces and put in solar dries for two or three days depending on the sun intensity.

The cassavas are peeled before being sliced into small pieces, dried and ground into powder.

“We use solar drier technology which means it mostly works during the day. After they are well dried, the bananas are taken to a posho mill and ground into flour,” he explained.

After drying, they are then taken to the packaging room where they are mixed with millet and amaranth flour.

They will then be packaged into one kilo and 500 grams’ packets which sells at Ksh 200 and Ksh 100 respectively.

“When making about 300 kilos of the flour, we need about 90 kilos of millet, 90 kilos of bananas, 90 kilos of cassava and 30 kilos of pumpkins,” Kabui said.

Kabui cited set up government policies which are not friendly to beginners as some of his challenges.