Since the 2020 pandemic, the world has continued to show how resilient the human spirit is, with stories of people who reinvented themselves after the pandemic and who are now trailblazing in new things they never thought they would have ventured into.
One of these people is Nyambura Munyua, a 42-year-old single mother of two boys.
Nyambura is a supply chain demand planner by profession. She is also a business graduate
She had been working as a teacher in China before the pandemic struck towards the end of December 2019.
“I had been invited to China by my younger sister after losing my job in Kenya,” says Nyambura. Although she had not trained as a teacher in Kenya, she embraced the opportunity to teach in China and began to plan how she would fully establish herself in the country that is now the second largest economy in the world.
Around December 2019, Nyambura Munyua traveled to Kenya for holidays. “I was in Kenya on holiday when pandemic happened. Lockdowns were instituted and I was unable to travel back to China,” she says.
Things got worse as the world quickly distanced itself from China where the disease had started from. Flights were banned.
“I was left jobless. With lockdowns starting in Kenya, I had to figure out how to survive and make some money,” she says. She started making porridge flour for sale but stopped as her new business proved unviable.
“I stopped this venture because of three things, the last mile delivery partner, government regulations and very high requirement for minimum order quantities (MOQs) for packaging,” says Nyambura.
“Once I knew it wasn’t going to work, I started searching for my next venture,” she says.
Her next idea came from a personal need. “I live in a very cold place and I suffer cold feet. At the time, I was looking for a solution for my predicament that was not second hand. On one hand I was supporting made in Kenya so I was looking for a brand that would give me some socks. I found none,” she says.
She wondered how many other people were in silently in her situation. “I thought this was a unique need that I could turn into an idea.”
Since she couldn’t knit socks and run the business at the same time, Nyambura decided that she would recruit women who would knit, and then she would find a market for the finished products.
“I named my business Thogithi – which translates to socks. I started with one knitter from Laikipia County.”
As she worked to develop her new venture, Nyambura realized that she could use her model to enroll more women in Laikipia.
“I turned Thogithi into a community-based organization to support women in the community through the knitting of socks and registered it in 2021,” she says.
Nyambura says that the organization provides all the raw materials, pays the women a fair wage for the work done and markets the products.
“We do training for the women. We have master designers who come up with the original designs then teach others. We started as B2C but we are moving to B2B for private label clients,” she says.
So far, Thogithi has enrolled over 70 women in the program. “Our aim is to catalyze local production, improve livelihoods, encourage entrepreneurship and address the potential women have to improve their livelihoods by undertaking activities that utilize local resources and skills to generate income and build their communities. We are focused on a for trade not aid approach and the bona-fide consumption of the made in Kenya brand,” she says.
To manage the commercial gaps in making profits, Nyambura says that they have been lucky to attract grants. “The knitting ensures the sustainability of our projects way past the donor shelf life,” she says.
Funding has been one of the biggest challenges Thogithi has experienced.
“From my experience, I have come to learn that contrary to many people’s beliefs, securing funding for a startup CBO requires hard work and proof of concept. It requires governance structures, community participation and legal frameworks,” she says.
“Training and capacity building for the knitters to ensure that they fully understand and own the projects has also been such a challenge.”
Nyambura has also created a support group on Facebook to for her organization and other ventures in the cottage industries sector. The support group is known as Cottage Industries Kenya Arise.
“I created this support group a few months after starting Thogithi. It has have since grown into an association for cottage industries in Kenya,” she says. In 2022, Nyambura officially registered this platform as an association.
“Our membership is drawn from all sectors ranging from agricultural value addition, textiles, furniture, leather and footwear, chemical and allied, and so on,” she says.
Incidentally, it is on Facebook that Nyambura’s Thogithi found its first financier. “We launched our crowdfunding campaign to raise capital for our organization and the first backer sent us some money,” she says.
“They read our story on social media and was compelled to show support.” Nyambura is also running Cottage Arise-Trade Support Institution(CA-TSI).
She says that through this association, they are able to gain access into local and international markets which translates into economic benefits for the rural women.
“Most of our knitters have limited formal educational and this makes it difficult for them. But we believe that everyone has a skill to offer and it’s these skills we want to tap into,” says Nyambura.
In the first half of 2023, Nyambura registered a Sacco to empower the women she has enrolled in her program. The Sacco known as Viwanda Vidogo Sacco operates from Laikipia.
To join, she says the requirement is that one should be a cottage industrialist and a member of the cottage association first. “Our aim is to avail affordable credit, give our members in rural areas savings plans, pool our resources together and hit our cottage industries targets,” she says.
Juggling motherhood and all her economic ventures has not been a walk in the park though. “Being a single mother raising sons has its challenges. I worked out of the country and I spent a decent amount of time away,” she says.
“However my family is extremely supportive and my children never quite felt the absence. I also made sure that I was home twice a year to make up for the time.” Her first born son is a biotechnology student in university and her youngest son is in high school.
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Does she have any regrets how her life has panned out? Nyambura says that if she could turn back the clock, she would study education in university and be a teacher.
“I had a very good experience in teaching, and I believe I would definitely make one great literature and drama teacher,” she says, adding that she occasionally teaches online.
Nyambura Munyua’s five takeaways
a). I have an affinity for nice things in life. But I’m now turning 42 this year and that is the age for building. I don’t want to be an old cranky broke woman living a life of regrets. I want old age to find me at Montego Bay having the time of my life.
b). Entrepreneurship is a very lonely journey, not for everyone. When starting in business, I strongly would suggest that one starts with a less pompous momentum. Focus on building relationships and improving the products and the rest will follow later.
c). The customer is more interested on the experience than the fancy office location, nice sales van, number of staff hired.
d). Always start with the available resources within your radius. Envision your end game and work backwards. Build in silence and launch when ready. If things don’t work out as planned, set plan B in motion, then plan C and on to the next in the alphabet until you hack it right.
e). I have learnt about the value of the saving culture. Savings alone is a good thing but putting your money where it grows is a satisfying and worthwhile journey.
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