Feature: Challenges of women micro-traders in Western Kenya

Truphena Gesare Nyabuti, a Kenyan, has to move with speed to sell to travellers aboard public service vehicles pulling over for five to 10 minutes at Ekerenyo, along Kericho-Kisii highway, county of Nyamira in Western Kenya.

Hawking ripe bananas, avocado and sugarcane at the transit center has been her means of survival for almost a decade now.

She is uncertain of the time she joined the lot scrambling over attention of passengers with interest of having them buy one or two bundles. But she says it was soon after she gave birth to her now nine-year old son.

"This basin (small hand washing basin) used to be 0.1 U.S. dollars," she told Xinhua in an interview on Monday. "A whole cane could be sold for 0.07 dollars. These days you can only be lucky to buy for four dollars," she added.

The mother of four said she buys most of her stock since she has a small piece of land where she has mainly planted maize and bananas.

"I buy a whole raw banana 3.5 dollars with five marketable bundles when ripe. If you calculate, I will surely make a loss if I was to sell your price," Nyabuti told a male customer who wanted to buy a cluster of the full yellowed bananas at 0.2 dollars against the 0.5 five dollar price.

Finally, he failed to buy over disagreement on the price. For Paulina Kwamboka, hawking shelled boiled groundnuts and bananas is what has kept her going since she finished high school in 2003.

"I have a cow and a goat. I bought them through my profits. I sell milk every morning before I come here," says the single mother of two children- one in secondary school and another in higher primary.

Apart from being rained on, she said customer's attitude is one of the most challenging problem she encounters every day.

"Customers do now want to understand that we also buy (farm produce) from others. They think we are exploiting them. They always bargain and want everything for 0.1 or 0.2 dollars," said Kwamboka who sells a cup of the grounds at 0.2 dollars and 0.5 to one dollar for bananas depending on the size and buying price.

She said hawking farm produce has enabled her invest in her children's education indicating that she could only abandon it once they complete university.

She says she splits proceeds from her milk selling for her retirement and children education expenses while puts all from hawking in informal saving groups.

"I am in six groups. We contribute on Wednesday and Saturday," she said. "On Wednesday, I part with 19 dollars: one group takes five dollars and the rest two receive seven dollars each," explained the trader.

On Saturday, she also remits a total of nine dollars with each of the three groups receiving three dollars.

She is hopeful that her children will raise the dignity of her life since she said her kind of hawking is strenuous, dangerous and draws disdain from the society.

As she struggles to beat the odds in the business that has no patience for a snail's pace, she is optimistic her daughters will someday become lawyers and take good care of her.

"There are no big farms anymore (to grow crops in large-scale). This is my farm (hawking) but I don't want to grow old in it," Kwamboka hopes.

Trading in farm produce is categorized as a micro-enterprise under agriculture in the Micro and Small Enterprises (MSE) Act, the Kenyan legislations recognizing role of hawkers in building the country's economy.

In every part of Kenya, women form the majority of the small scale traders selling farm produce.

Now the county governments are constitutionally bound to bolster agricultural productivity in the 47 regions by encouraging farmers to adopt innovative ways of farming and marketing their produce.

More than 85 percent of Kenyans draw their livelihoods from farming either directly or indirectly, considering the rural population supplies food sold in the urban centers.

Micro and Small Enterprise Authority, an entity served with responsibility of promoting progressive development among the small traders continues to urge SMEs to form Saccos and cooperatives as a platform to accessing profitable markets and achieve better growth. Endit