Thuo Mathenge: How Quitting Medicine Made Me A Billionaire

Thuo Mathenge is a politician and businessman with interests in the hospitality, real estate, property and agriculture sectors.

He rose from rearing chicken to becoming a billionaire and has claimed to be second largest employer in Nyeri County.

Mathenge was pursuing a course in medicine but he later quit to pursue entrepreneurship, a move that saw him build a multibillion business empire.

Here is the story as told by WoK.

After completion of his primary school education, Mathenge was enrolled in a local secondary school where he studied from Form One to Form Six.

He completed his studies and joined Eldoret District Hospital, now Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH), to pursue a Diploma in Medicine.

Speaking on The Wicked Edition, Mathenge disclosed that he secured a job at the hospital after completing his diploma course.

“The issue was saving in order not to go through what my family experienced at the time. I wanted to change the life of my sisters and my brothers,” he said.

From his savings, Mathenge bought several properties including parcels of land in different locations in Eldoret.

In the late 1990s, he lost his land following skirmishes in Rift Valley but he got it back after late Retired President Mwai Kibaki assumed power in 2002.

“I got back the land that was taken by force and sold it after which I moved to Nairobi,” he said.

In Nairobi, Mathenge secured a job at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) shortly before she went into business.

“I started my clinics, I had more than 8 clinics in Nairobi and Kiambu. I also had three chemists. I used to have a lot of money because I would go to my clinics with briefcases to collect them,” he said.

With the clinics raking in good money, Mathenge thought of ways to empower and create employment for young people in his village.

As such, he donated his clinics to his friends in the medical field and decided to set up chicken farms in his village in Nyeri County.

He established Brade Gate Poultry Industry, which was the first private hatchery in the county.

“I followed the vision that God had given me and set up the farms in the village, although, people didn’t want to work for me because I came from an humble background

“However, they later realized my potential and started working in my farm,” Mathenge explained.

He then used Ksh 25 million to import the first batch of chicks from Netherlands. He later hatched more chicks and set up a slaughterhouse which he says is the largest in East Africa.

“I put up a hatchery, and later a slaughterhouse. We started slaughtering and supplying them to my hotels most of which are in Nyeri County,” Mathenge said.

The slaughterhouse has a capacity of slaughtering about 1,400 chickens per hour and more than 30,000 on a daily basis.

Background

Mathenge was born in 1964 in Nyeri County.

His father died fighting for the independence of Kenya while the mother was detained by the colonial masters.

He was brought up by his grandmother. 

“We were weak because our grandmother could not afford to give us three meals a day. At night, she gave us a sack to sleep in, and my siblings and I would share the sack. It was the bed, blanket and sheets,” he said.

Today, he owns a college, a resort, a wheat mill, a bakery, chicken and chips outlets in five major towns all under the Brade Gate brand name.

He has vast parcels of land in the Mount Kenya region, a Ksh 800 million hotel in Nyeri town and properties across various major towns.