Joyce Makaka feeds fish at her ponds in Lurambi, Kakamega County. She
supplies fingerlings to fish farmers in Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia and
Vihiga counties. Isaac Walle/Nation
Four years ago, Joyce Makaka was running a popular eatery at
Shelter Afrique Centre in Nairobi. She would take home more than
Sh50,000 a month after deducting a similar amount for savings.
Then one morning she woke up to a rude shock when she was told that her lease for the premises would not be renewed.
She
was devastated and confused. She packed her bags and left for her rural
home in Eshisiru on the Kakamega-Mumias road to engage in fish farming.
The former Post Bank employee’s decision puzzled her
husband, a pilot in Sudan, and her children, but they gave her their
full support.
Makaka, 51, was among the first farmers
to be trained in fish farming under the Economic Stimulus Programme,
which sought to promote aquaculture in the country.
She
started with a single pond dug and stocked by the Ministry of Fisheries
Development. A few months later, she decided to did two more ponds with
a Sh2 million loan her husband secured from a bank and her savings.
But
things did not work according to plan after a rectangular tank she had
constructed at a cost of Sh1.3 million burst due to faulty design.
She did not know that a circular tank was best because it could withstand a lot of pressure.
“I
was very disheartened, but did not give up. I convinced my husband to
have faith in what I was doing and go for another loan so that I could
carry on with the project to generate enough money to repay what we had
borrowed,” she told Seeds of Gold.
Her persistence has
paid off. Today, she is a leading fingerlings producer in Kakamega,
supplying to farmers in Vihiga, Busia and Bungoma.
In
2011, Makaka supplied 200,000 fingerlings at Sh6 each, bagging Sh1.2
million. While she has been cagey about the figures for fear of exposing
herself to crime, she says returns have risen exponentially in the last
four years.
From the sale of the fingerlings, Ms
Makaka has been able to repay the loans. She has concentrated on Nile
perch, tilapia and catfish because of high demand and good prices.
She
has now set up nine ponds, a hatchery and five tanks at her fish farm.
She built the hatchery for fingerlings at Sh1.2 million. Four of the
tanks are for breeding catfish, which preys on young fish if not
separated from them.
High cost of food
She has hired six young people from the village to help her.
She has hired six young people from the village to help her.
Her
day starts at 5am when she cleans the ponds, feeds the fish and attends
to other chores that go with fish farming, and ends well past 8pm.
Makaka
has drawn her biggest lessons on how to manage the project from the
experience she gained while operating the eatery, and training by the
Fisheries department.
The challenges she faces daily include high cost of food and wild birds that prey on the fish in the ponds.
She spends Sh2,000 daily on food. She says fish farming is labour-intensive, but has high returns.
Her biggest wish is for the county government to speed up construction of the Sh70 million fish processing plant at Lutonyi.
This
would take away the storage woes, earn them more money and open up a
new, bigger market for the smallholders, whose biggest customers are
currently their poor neighbours.
Kakamega county executive for agriculture, Penninah Mukabane, agrees.
“We would like the facility to become operational and serve farmers in the region without further delay.”
She said the county government had allocated Sh50 million for rehabilitating fish ponds and to help farmers restock them.
Nearly
5,000 ponds have been set up by farmers in the county. The latest
statistics put harvests for 2012 at 271,000 tonnes, earning farmers
Sh146 million.
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