Jean Marc Sika blogs about the Kenya National Domestic Biogas Programme.
Our man Jean Marc Sika keeps us up to date about the Kenya National Domestic Biogas Programme. This time he tells about Peter Thuo, living in Naivasha (about 80 kms from Nairobi). Thuo has been constructing houses since 1986. In November 2009, he was selected and trained in the biogas technology by KENDBIP. And Thuo is quite succesfull ...
Peter Thuo, living in Naivasha (about 80 kms from Nairobi), has been constructing houses since 1986. In November 2009, he was selected and trained in the biogas technology by KENDBIP. He built his first plant for one of his neighbor in his home town in January 2010. As per end May 2010, he has built 19 biogas plants. Two in Naivasha and 17 in Kimende. He completed his 20th plant first week of June and has 3 plants are actually under construction in Kiambu. In the meantime, he has already secured clients for the immediate future. In effect, as soon as he has the space, he will start constructing 2 other plants in Naivasha while 2 clients in Kimende are already parking building materials on site.
Peter Thuo is very busy and after some hesitation, has decided to disengage from house construction. This decision happens in March 2010. During that month, he realized that biogas sector was offering him more business opportunities than his original business of house construction. He sees the following advantages: (1) being a new product and there is less competition in the biogas sector. The market is also very promising in the region as it is the dairy milk belt of Kenya; (2) with a total costs of 75,000 Ksh (about 750 Euro) and a subsidy from KENDBIP of 25,000 Ksh (about 250 Euros), the product is affordable to most of the rural households therefore allow a high turnover; (3) Labor wise, the construction of a plant is less stressful and less tiresome (no heavy charge to lift), more secure (less risk of accident) and (4) he makes money out of it by going home, after paying all the workers, including himself, with 10,000 Ksh (about 100 Euros) per plant even though he reinvest 4 000 Ksh (about 40 Euros) back in the business in form of promotion, communication and transport.
Since March 2010, Peter Thuo constructs an average of 4 biogas plants per month. For each of the site where he constructs, there is one mason and two helpers. These masons attended the KENDBIP training of November 2009. They provide skilled labor and are paid by him. The two helpers, also masons, provide unskilled labor. They are paid by the household. Thuo’s objective is to build between 80-100 plants this year. He is aware that for been able to achieve this target and timely respond to requests from his growing clientele, he would have to quickly lift the construction capacity of his group to 10 plants per months. For the short term, he planned to add two trained masons to his crew and give an objective of 2 plants to be constructed per month by each of them. His idea is to position them in the main towns situated within his market area (Limuru, Kiambu, Naivasha and Nakuru) for constructions of plants for clients. He himself would take a more supervisory role. In effect, although demands started from his home town of Naivasha, they are more and more coming from neighboring areas (Kiambu, Limuru and also from Nakuru)
Thuo attributes this growth to the close partnership with the national biogas programme, the increased level of biogas awareness in the community and the visible benefits from the completed plants among the pioneer beneficiaries of the programme. His main constraints with this rapid growth of his business are supervision and transportation. Between Limuru and Nakuru, there is a distance of more than 100 km. Since he has to check all the plants before handing over to the owners, and also because he is constructing himself for the moment, supervision is becoming more and more difficult in case of absence of flexible means of transportation, especially when the distances between plants under construction are too large. However, no doubts that Peter Thuo foreseing sustained growth in the biogas sector in Kenya, has decided to seize business opportunities provided by KENDBIP and is moving with serenity towards a Biogas Construction Company!
More information? Please contact:
George Nyamu, KENDBIP National coordinator (Email: nyamu@kenfap.org)
Caroline Toroitich, SNV Biogas Advisor (Email: ctoroitich@snvworld.org)
Jean Marc Sika, ABPP Fund Manager (Email: jmsika@hivos.or.ke)
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