Rumukia & Gikanda Smallholder Organisations are Fair Trade certified. Their 8,272 members farm 0.8 hectares of Kenya each and they produce 715 tonnes of conventional and speciality green coffee beans as well as Macedamia nuts and milk. Not surprisingly, Brian Keegan is a bean counter, a lover of numbers, an accountant so, very well suited to the task ahead. He’s also a passionate advocate of the LYFE project and an Irishman with a full packet of humanity and humour - which makes him the perfect LYFE pilot..

The cooperatives’ management needs entrepreneurial expertise and accountancy skills to develop and implement their business plan. Rumukia and Gikanda intend to take advantage of recent market liberalisation. To do this, they’ll need to increase their technical capacity and, in light of direct sales potential, they’ll need to protect themselves from unsavoury agents who will attempt to undermine them on price. To make matters even more interesting, the coops have been issued with a marketing license but are technically unable to market their own coffee, simply because there is no knowledge in the new emerging market. To help Brian navigate what will inevitably be a thrilling and important venture, he’ll have the support of Mr Ritho who works for Taifa SACCO in Nyeri – a Banking Co-operative.

In the long game, Brian and the management team will be looking at ways to reduce the Co-ops dependency on coffee – somehow we doubt Brian will be reducing his.

Snapshot: Brian Keegan’s LYFE plan

1. Analyse existing business practices - what are current management practices, where are the downfalls, how can they be improved.

2. Find local training partners  [Maybe this will help. Ed]

On 30 November 2006 – Three regional institutions of higher education have won awards for e-government and e-commerce demonstrations in the campaign “Power Up with ICT”. The winners are Kisumu Polytechnic, Tracom College (Nakuru) and Nyeri Technical Training Institute. The awards consisted of mobile phones given by Nokia Telecom Corporation and web domains given by the Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC). Nyeri Technical Training Institute has built a member and marketing system for coffee cooperatives. This application was chosen in the light of the recent coffee marketing liberalization in Kenya. The award was received by John Kiboi, head of computer studies department. Almost all Nokia mobile telephones that are currently being manufactured are capable of accessing the Internet. Safaricom Ltd, the lead sponsor of ‘Power Up’, has recently introduced a high speed Internet access service for mobile phones called Safaricom Mobile Office powered by GPRS/EDGE technology.

For more information about Lorna Young Foundation Entrepreneurs, contact ian@lyfe.ac