37-year-old Maureen Kenga is a mother, a wife and a career woman who wears many caps.
When you walk to the Ministry of National Treasury and Economic Planning in Nairobi where she works, you will find her at the library in one of the departments.
“I am a Librarian in one of the libraries at the Ministry of National Treasury and Economic Planning,” she says.
She is so passionate about what she does that you wouldn’t imagine that she got into the field of information science by chance!
You see, after completing high school at Lema Girls Secondary School in Machakos in 2003, Maureen’s aspiration was to pursue a course in ICT. She applied for a diploma in information studies at the then Kenya Technical Training College in 2005.
“When I joining KTTC for information studies in 2005, I thought it was an ICT course only to find out that it was dealing with libraries and records management with a small bit of ICT,” she says. She wanted to change the diploma to a diploma in ICT.
Maureen recalls how the then deputy Head of Department for the course she had chosen went to great lengths to convince her not to change course.
“His name was Mr. Ireri. He spent the first three weeks of the first semester trying to convince us that this was a good course that could change our lives,” she says, noting that the regulations only allowed students to change their course within the first month.
Maureen says that with the clock ticking, she was confronted with two choices; to embrace the course or to quit and try her chances elsewhere. “I told myself that perhaps this was fate; this was my destiny. I was already in the waters, I could as well swim,” she says.
In 2007, she graduated with a diploma in Library Studies. By this time, Maureen was determined to turn what had initially looked like lemons into lemonade.
But as life would have it, she got married immediately after college in 2008, became a mother and started job searching in 2010. She also returned to KTTC in 2010 for a diploma in Technical Education in Information Studies.
“I got a computer lab technician job on casual basis at Thika Technical Training College in 2010 which I did up until mid-2011. From mid-2011 to April 2012, I was upgraded to Information Studies Certificate Course trainer,” says Maureen who is now a mother of three.
By this time she was finalizing her second diploma. She graduated in 2012.
“I got my first job after graduating. I was employed by the then, Ministry of Planning, National Development and Vision 2030 as a Library Assistant in 2012 and deployed to Endebess Sub-County (Trans Nzoia County),” she says.
Inspired with the success her diploma had brought her, Maureen returned to school again, this time at Kisii University for a Bachelor’s degree in Library and Information Science, Records Management option, and graduated in 2017. She was hungrier for success. She wanted to scale the career ladder.
“I knew that the only way for me to climb the career ladder was to improvise my skills. In 2018, I joined Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology (JKIAT) for my Masters.”
Maureen graduated in June 2022 with an Master of Science in Information and Knowledge Management. Over this time, she scaled her career ladder and moved from Endebess to the ministry’s Nairobi headquarters.
At work, her 8 to 5 work routine does not betray the other business ventures that she is running quite successfully. Besides her career, Maureen is also a farmer in Lamu County.
“I started farming in Lamu in 2012. I started on a small scale with a start-up capital of Sh. 10,000. I have now specialized in sesame, sunflower and green grams. These are short term crops that take three months to mature,” she says.
Currently, Maureen farms on 20 acres. One part of this is her own land while the other is an allocation by the government.
“My primary target market is the local Kongowea main market, though I have also built a network of clients from as far as Nairobi,” she says. To manage the farm, she has one full-time farm manager. She also employs casual labourers on a needs-basis.
Maureen has also ventured into the cashew nuts value addition business, in which she sells raw or baked cashew nuts at the Shikilia Stores along Tom Mboya street in Nairobi.
“I started the cashew nuts business in 2020 during the 2020 pandemic. I don’t have an employee for this business. I run it with a partner instead,” she says.
But these are not the end of it. Maureen has also partnered with her mother in a water brooms business known as Jescah Mweyeli Enterprises. “We started this business in 2013. My mom takes care of the physical day to day business needs while I support her on finances and taxation,” she says.
Maureen says that her water brooms business and the cashew nuts venture have broken even. However, returns from the farming venture can vary from season to season.
“Returns from farming fluctuate from season to season because of over-reliance on rain-fed farming,” she says, adding that she is now working towards drilling a borehole at the farm for long term sustenance. “Tests have already been done by the water resources authority (WARMA) and the correct water locations have been identified,” says Maureen.
She says that her main reason for venturing into side businesses was to supplement her family’s income and also assist her mom meet the school expenses of her siblings.
“My mom is a widow. Our dad died in 1995. I was educated by my dad’s brothers and my mom’s brother. I had to step up and help my mom educate my brothers after I was done with college since life was getting tough and my fathers (dad’s brothers) had to take care of their own children,” she says.
In 2018 Maureen formed the Pwani Ufanisi Farmers Cooperative (PUFCO) in partnership with her colleagues from the Coast region.
“Being farmers at the Coast region, we realized that agriculture is greatly underutilized at the coast. We started the farmers society to help communities improve on this and to boost food security,” she says. PUFCO has coverage in the six coastal counties of Kilifi, Mombasa, Kwale, Lamu, Tana River and Taita Taveta.
To top it all, Maureen is also big on volunteer jobs. “I volunteer in mentoring and coaching young professionals in Information Science through the Information Society of Kenya (ISK) with a team of my fellow professionals. Once in a while, I also volunteer with Kenya Association of Records Managers and Archivists (KARMA),” she says. “I am also a volunteer with the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4DEV) which is a global community that brings together knowledge managers across the globe.”
Maureen has also gone into consultancy, and occasionally offers consultancy services from her primary experience in Knowledge Management, Library Management and Records Management. Asked how she has managed to carry all these in her purse, Maureen says that she had to readjust and make it work.
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“Time management has been my secret weapon. Having an 8am-5pm job sets the pace for the other businesses that I am in. I am left with the weekday nights, weekends and my leave days for my personal ventures,” she says. Her typical day starts at 4.30am and ends at 11.00pm.
But multitasking has not always been smooth sailing. “At times it becomes overwhelming and I feel like giving up on everything. 2021 and 2022 was very overwhelming. Besides my career and family life, I was also a part-time student. I had to slow down on the cashew nut business in order to focus with my official job and education,” she says.
She recalls that before she ventured into side businesses, her formal job routine guaranteed her free evenings and weekends.
“With nothing much to do and think of after work, I spent most of the free time watching movies and lazing around,” she says. “I miss these movie nights though I do create time once in a while for them. I mostly miss impromptu social events as I have a schedule for my social life. I also do not get the free time of talking about everything and nothing with anybody,” she says.
The rewards of her hard toil have somehow made up for all this. “I am able to support my husband financially and we are doing well as a family, which is important for me,” says Maureen.
She is also proud that her work in information sciences has gained global recognition. “I am humbled that my work has been recognized globally.
In September 2023, I physically presented a paper on ‘Digital Accessibility, Inclusion and Diversity: Digitization of Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge in Shaping Food Security across the Kenyan Coastal Region’ at the iPRES 2023 Conference in Urbana-Champaign, in Illinois, United States.
To keep her balance, Maureen says that she has mentors and coaches who walk with her through her career and business journey.
“I also have a controlled circle of friends. I have come to realize that with the right friends and mentors, you won’t go too far before you’re corrected whenever you take the wrong turn in life,” she says, adding that her volunteer has also opened networks and collaborations that have propelled her career and businesses further.
“It’s not always about the money. Volunteer and help whenever you can, the universe has a way of repaying the good you do unto others with opportunities,” says Maureen.
A version of this feature on Maureen Kenga was also published in the Saturday Magazine. The Saturday Magazine is a publication of the Nation Media Group.
