1

Introduction

SNV’s intervention around Kiserian Livestock Market involves working in a fairly large and complex market

system involving a terminal livestock market that interfaces with a meat market and other associated service

providers. It also connects with pastoralists producer groups through the work of the Keekonyokie Market Access

Company (MAC). This fact sheet summarizes the various initiatives of SNV and various actors around the terminal

market.

Keekonyokie Slaughter House

Keekonyokie Slaughter House was established in 1981 by a group of Keekonyokie Maasai. It was registered in

1992 as a limited company in the name Keekonyokie Butchers Limited. Keekonyokie is managed by the

community members with a board of directors, consisting of seven members. The board is elected annually based

on the year’s performance (indicators: income generated and volume of business). Membership in the board of

directors has rotated substantially over the years.

The slaughterhouse has grown from processing 30 cattle per day

to 180 per day in the last five years. The slaughter house has

created the critical positive enabling environment for vibrant

private sector meat business to operate. This particular success

has helped the Masai pastoralists get 30% more price for their

livestock making Keekonyokie livestock market is the largest

pastoralist owned livestock marketing and processing enterprise

in East Africa with an average daily turnover of more than Kshs

5 million that has given positive livelihoods to more than

100,000 households in Kajiado and northern Tanzania.

The slaughter house also serves as the terminal market for livestock from the southern rangelands and parts of

rift valley and northern Kenya. Every day on average 200 cattle and 400 shoats valued at Sh 5m change hands in

the market for slaughter, resale or restocking the range.

Slaughter house operations and services provided:

The slaughter house provides a slaughter service to livestock traders,

meat brokers and butchers. It is an integrated business incorporating

meat processing, a meat wholesale “supermarket”, cold storage,

hides and skins and offals (intestinal meats that is popular with the

bottom market segment). There are also other value addition

activities that have been introduced recently which includes meat

deboning, mincing and vacuum packing.

Achievements

The Slaughter house has become the central “pull” factor for the

economic life of Kiserian Market and the Maasai pastoralists in general. The key achievements of the slaughter

house include:

A six-fold growth from processing 30 cattle per day to 180 per day in the last five years, making it the

biggest pastoralist terminal market.

A daily turnover of between sh 60,000-100,000 in slaughter fees makes the slaughter house a vibrant

business with clear returns to shareholders.

Creation of employment- 172 people are employed directly by the slaughterhouse. Several other hundreds

are employed in associated service businesses such as cleaning, money transfer, meat transport and other

value addition.

Factsheet on Kiserian Livestock Market, Slaughter

house and Market Access Company

2

Providing a “guaranteed” market for livestock, therefore greatly reducing the risk associated with the sale

of livestock.

The management of the slaughterhouse has embraced a learning culture, which has transformed

knowledge into innovation that has contributed to the rapid growth of the business. As a result,

Keekonyokie has become a showcase of a successful community owned and managed livestock enterprise.

A strong and transparent business management structure with annual elections.

An equitable system of sharing returns from the livestock trade. Even in the highly informal business

environment, every actor in the market chain makes money at the end of the day!

Challenges

Inability to fully comply with the new slaughterhouse regulations instituted by the government in 2010.

These mostly concern meat hygiene and food safety requirements.

Inadequate capacity/knowledge on meat processing and hygiene.

Inadequate physical infrastructure for the livestock trading as well as for meat processing and value

addition.

Difficulty in organizing a critical mass of informal sector actors with diverse interests and knowledge.

Keekonyokie Biogas Initiative

In 2005 the slaughterhouse decided to construct and operate a biogas

plant to convert slaughterhouse waste into energy and bio fertilizer.

This was part of an effort to fulfil NEMA requirements for

slaughterhouses to stop discharge of waste water in rivers causing

environmental degradation. The methane produced by the biogas

plant would have several end-use applications. It would be used to

generate electrical power for the meat cold room, meat processing

equipment and hot water for sterilizing and washing the abattoir.

Excess biogas would be supplied to the local communities as cheap cooking gas to replace the charcoal obtained

from cutting of trees. The liquid organic fertilizer sold to local farmers to replace the expensive chemical fertilizer

and increase food self sufficiency of local communities.

To make this happen Keekonyokie slaughterhouse invested its resources and constructed a fixed dome biogas

plant of 250m3 capacity, and biogas storage tank 200m3 that is piped to a generator set (20 KVA) capacity

producing alternative power for the slaughter house. The plant has a capacity of 450m3 of biogas and 10 tons of

liquid fertilizer per day.

In 2011, following a call from AECF, Keekonyokie presented a concept paper on the packaging of biogas. The

proposal sought to develop an innovation for packaging biogas for sale

to local residents. The value proposition was to provide clean

household energy for the Bottom of the pyramid (BOP) through

structured local innovation in response to the emerging challenge of

energy poverty. Through the innovation Keekonyokie was seeking to

sell at least 50 (13 kg) cylinders of a low priced gas to local residents.

This followed an earlier attempt by the slaughter house to pipe the gas

to several hotels in the market. Following a successful effort to submit

a “prototype” cylinder and carry out a demonstration, Keekonyokie

was requested to develop a full business plan. Recent indications are that AECF is interested to fund this

innovation and has asked Keekonyokie to engage a consultant to review the business plan in line with AECF’s

requirements.

Keekonyokie Market Access Company

The MAC concept was developed through an FAO supported Rural Knowledge Network project that links value

chain players to markets, finance and market information. Market Access Centers (MACs) offer market access and

Transaction Security Services (TSS) to rural agricultural producers including pastoralists.

3

The MAC business model

The Keekonyokie Slaughter House has been at the centre of the establishment of the Keekonyokie MAC. The MAC

has playing a key role of linking pastoralist groups to the terminal

market. In this regard, it has links with three other producer MACs

based in the rangelands of Kaputiei and Loitokitok. The MAC is

currently piloting the TSS trading card that involves buying

livestock from producers and tracking all the intermediate costs to

arrive at the net profit. This is then shared transparently as a

bonus. The TSS model therefore promotes traceability and

transparency along the chain.

So far the Keekonyokie MAC has been instrumental in collecting

market information from the market and feeding the same to LINKS. The MAC is also providing a service to the

informal meat processors by charging a fee for vacuum packing and meat mincing.

The MAC is also the force behind the Keekonyokie Pastoralist Field School through which the MAC hopes to

support value addition in the rangeland through improving access to pasture and steer fattening. This in turn will

translate to better quality livestock that fetch premium prices in the terminal market.

The Pastoralist Field School.

The PFS was established to serve as a local learning centre through which the

pastoralists engage and learn various livestock production technologies within their

own value systems. It involves the use of visual illustrations of various aspects of

livestock production, marketing, natural resource management, and policy

analysis. It also has demonstration sites for pasture conservation and water

harvesting.

Through the NALEP partnership, SNV has used the field school to broker knowledge on the various technologies

for building resilience against drought especially pasture management and water harvesting. Through the

partnership over 200 participants have gone through the school this year alone. These were drawn from the

greater Kajiado district and also TOTs from West Pokot, Isiolo and Samburu. During the last season the school

produced over 3,000 bales of hay valued at sh. 600,000. The school is currently selling the hay to pastoralists.

Role of SNV

SNV made an entry to the Kiserian terminal market in 2010 in an effort to engage more with terminal markets

and also the meat value chain. The engagement has been a source of great learning for SNV and has for

instance; through exposure visits benefited not only SRP but also teams from NRP, northern Kenya, S. Sudan and

more recently a colleague from Zimbabwe. SNV has an MOU with the slaughterhouse and MAC. Through this SNV

has added value to the market system in the following ways:

Supporting the MAC to link with the NLMIS and hence have the market data captured.

Linking producer groups to the terminal market through the MAC. This has also involved local partners-

Dupoto, NIA and AWF.

Linking the livestock field school to the NALEP program- through which it has benefitted from technical

support from the ministry of livestock development.

Provision of LCB support to the field school training programs.

Supporting and fast tracking knowledge and innovations in the Keekonyokie slaughterhouse meat

business.

Development of the AECF concept and draft business plan for the Keekonyokie biogas.

Support Keekonyokie to brand and market its meat in the urban market.

4

Foreseen activities

VOSD in hygienic, meat processing and value addition targeting the informal meat business.

Brokering links with MoLD for infrastructure development through Public Private Partnership (PPP)

Development of a business case for the MAC together with appropriate support systems.

Business planning for the biogas enterprise.

Learning, Knowledge brokering and sharing in the pro-poor livestock VC.

Development of a community training curriculum in sustainable livestock production.