County launches programme to loan youths cows

Murang’a Governor Mwangi wa iria on Monday launched a unique plan to empower his county’s youths and create employment opportunities dubbed one-youth-one-cow.

In the programme, the governor provided the youths with one cow each for them to start a dairy farming business, in a plan he hopes will go a long way in ensuring the youths are occupied and earn a decent living.

The potential beneficiaries of the programme were first required to register with a dairy cooperative society so as to go through a legal process after identifying the dairy cow one wanted to purchase.

A valuation and due diligence procedure were then conducted by county officials after which the youths were required to pay an insurance premium fee amounting to 4 per cent of the price of the dairy cow identified.

Wa Iria added that the county government then completed the purchase on behalf of the youths who then received the high-yielding, pregnant dairy cows on credit and would repay the loan through milk deliveries to processors.

“The ‘One-Youth-One-Cow’ program allows the repayment of the loan to be done through proceeds from the milk produced which are shared on a 50 per cent basis between the individual and the county government, with lactating and the already pregnant cows reducing risks of non-serviced loans,” he added.

This year, the county set Sh35 per liter as the minimum cost payable to farmers for raw milk delivered, whether or not there was overproduction, especially during the rainy season.

Wa Iria noted that the interventions are part of a plan to make Murang’a County the leading milk producing county in the process uplifting farmers’ livelihoods.

He noted that they had put up all the structures in place after rolling out high-protein fodder varieties, which we are given to farmers for free as well as streamlining regular vaccination program.

Furthermore, 35 milk coolers had already been fitted in every ward of the county to ensure the success of the initiative that was put in place.