Kevin Kamau: From Rejecting Ksh 1M Twiga Job To Building A Farming Business Managing 5000 Acres

After all, he had studied economics and finance and spent about 10 years in Kansas City, Missouri.

However, as it often happens in life, things did not go the way he expected.

Kevin grew up in Waithaka, Nairobi, in a family he describes as middle class.

His great-grandmother worked as a house manager for a white settler and had bought several parcels of land in Majengo and Dagoretti.

He attended St. Mary’s for primary school and several secondary schools before spending two years in Uganda studying for his A levels.

Sadly, his father passed away during his fourth year of high school, leaving his mother as the family’s sole breadwinner.

After completing high school, Kamau relocated to America to further his education. His mother paid for his first semester, after which he had to find other ways of funding his education.

His first job involved calling former students through a university alumni office to ask for donations.

Luckily, his sister, who was also living in America at the time, helped him adjust.

After studying economics and finance, he found another job working as a caregiver to people with developmental disabilities.

From there, he found yet another job which involved managing doctors’ offices.

By then, he was already in a stable relationship. After his 30th birthday, he told his girlfriend that he wanted to return to Kenya, and she agreed.

Back home, his efforts to find a job hit a brick wall.

“I came looking for a job. Sent my CVs around and stuff like that. It didn’t work out,” he said in an interview on the Financially Incorrect podcast.

After three months, he decided to venture into farming. Land was available, and he approached his sister for a KSh100,000 loan.

His first venture as a farmer was in Kinangop, and it was successful, with Kamau harvesting about 7 tonnes of potatoes.

He sold them, supplying various restaurants and hotels in Highridge.

In December 2015, some of his friends who were living abroad saw his efforts and asked him to help their parents make better use of their farms.

Kamau took on the challenge, managing some farms in Nanyuki. He also divided the Kinangop plot into smaller sections and experimented with different crops.

To seek agricultural expertise, he visited the University of Nairobi’s Kabete campus. One of the students he met while looking for the dean’s office became his first employee.

As his business expanded, he began supplying potatoes to a potato crisps processor, but their demand was so high that he was forced to source potatoes from other farmers.

He registered his company, Tukalime, in April 2017.

Later that year, Twiga Foods founders Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke asked him to take on a senior management position in the company.

They were offering him a salary of between KSh 800,000 and KSh 1 million monthly, plus stock options.

Meanwhile, a contact named Laban introduced him to the Kinuthias, the family behind CKL Africa, formerly Coopers.

They proposed investing $100,000 in his business, and Kamau chose them over Twiga. However, he still worked with the company as a consultant.

Things went well until the Covid-19 pandemic hit Kenya, at which point Tukalime lost a large chunk of its clients.

“We went from having 50 clients to zero clients overnight,” he said.

As a result of these challenges, Kamau decided to change his business model.

He would lease land and farm it himself, paying owners rent instead of relying on them to finance production.

The business soon secured supply contracts worth $700,000 and another $1.5 million biofuel crop contract in 2022, where he was contracted to manage 2000 acres.

“By the time we were harvesting, we were fully paid,” he said.

Today, Tukalime contracts up to 500 labourers daily and has a farming footprint of about 5,000 acres.

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