[kamakazi]

Nelson Muguku Njoroge, one of Kenya's newest Billionaires, is an amazing success story, who started of as a poor chicken farmer and is now Equity Banks largest single shareholder with shares worth more than 1 Billion Ksh since the stocks IPO on the Nairobi Stock Exchange.


Rags to riches, via chicken

Story by STEPHEN MBURU
Publication Date: 11/28/2004

President Jomo Kenyatta loved boiled eggs for breakfast. But one morning he was disappointed and refused to eat. Why? Suddenly, the eggs were dramatically smaller. The President summoned the housekeeper, Mrs Mwathi, to the breakfast table to explain the matter. She said the old supplier had been stopped because his tender had expired. A new supplier had already been engaged.

Stunned, the President asked who the old supplier was and whom he was now selling eggs to. It was Nelson Muguku of Kikuyu Estates Settlement Scheme, Sigona, and he was probably selling to one of the big city hotels, Mrs Mwathi explained. "So quality eggs will now be available in hotels and not at the State House?" President Kenyatta retorted. "We cannot get good eggs here simply because the supplier has no government tender?" The President ordered the State House chief of staff to have that contract restored at once.

With his business contract in abeyance, it must have been an anxious moment for the legendary chicken farmer Muguku, but now he relates with relish the story of his lucrative ties with State House, the late President and even Sir Malcolm MacDonald, the Kenya colony's last Governor.

Actually, it was Sir Malcolm who had awarded Muguku the contract that was almost being withdrawn through the back door by a State House official who had started poultry keeping himself and wanted to benefit financially from his new preoccupation.

The Governor got word about a "native" who was doing very well in poultry keeping at the Africans settlement scheme in Sigona and decided to visit and see for himself in early 1963.

"When MacDonald visited me, I had 800 layers," Muguku recalls. "He asked me what my target was. I said 3,000. He turned to the VIPs in his entourage and remarked: And you people insist that Africans have no vision!"

On his return to Nairobi, the Governor drew up a contract to buy eggs from Muguku.

In a letter dated June 19, 1963 (just days after Kenya had won internal self-governance on June 1), Sir Malcolm wrote Muguku: "I remember well a visit I paid to your settlement farm several months ago, when I was impressed with your hard work, initiatives and ability. Since then I have been ill for a while, and so was not able to maintain an active interest in various matters. However, I have not forgotten your crowds of chickens, which you expected would start laying in a month or two.

"I hear that you are doing well on your farm, and that your chickens are producing lots of eggs. I therefore hope you can supply me with three dozen eggs each week when you come to visit Nairobi.

"I hear from Mr Finlayson (an aide to the Governor) that you come in on Fridays; and if you could bring the eggs on each Friday and hand them to my Housekeeper, Mrs Grant, a proper account can be kept so that you can be paid each month.

"I send you my best wishes for the future success of your farm."

Muguku was delighted. He sold eggs to the Governor for Sh4 a dozen. The contract continued even after Kenyatta took over as Prime Minister on December 12, 1963, and as President one year later. It went on until 1975 when a State House official stopped the order, explaining that the President was spending most of his time in Mombasa and not Nairobi for health reasons.

Muguku also supplied East African Railways and Harbours restaurants with eggs, until the demise of the East African Community in 1975.

"My contract had been terminated without notice," the farmer tells of the State House deal. "I delivered the eggs one morning and was told State House had engaged another supplier. One morning soon after, the housekeeper, Mrs Mwathi, called and told me Mzee had said I continue supplying eggs."

A State House official had started poultry keeping and wanted to take over the contract behind the President's back.

"Kenyatta would not have known what was going on; it's the quality of my eggs that betrayed the scheme to throw me out," says the farmer-businessman. "I would select the best for Mzee; the ones served that morning were incredibly small."
The man and his passion: Nelson Muguku with a basket of eggs and a chicken on his farm at Kikuyu Estates Settlement Scheme, Sigona, in 1963: He used to supply the East African Railways and Harbours restaurants with eggs. Photo/Family Album

Muguku started with two hens and a cock to supply eggs for breakfast in 1956. Then aged 24, he was teaching carpentry at Kabianga Teachers' College (now Kabianga High School).

Today, he is a multi-millionaire with a Mercedes Benz for himself and another for his wife, and owns one of the biggest hatcheries in the country - Muguku Poultry Farm in Sigona. His hatchery comprises four state-of-the-art Sh10-million incubators, with a capacity to produce 200,000 chicks a day. His breeding stock comprises 15,000 broilers and layers, which he imports as day-old chicks from Shavers company, UK. The farmer has 35 dairy cows and 15 sheep. "They give us some milk, but their main purpose is to trim the grass around the compound and destroy breeding grounds for mice and insects that would harm the poultry."

"I have come from far," says the humble millionaire. "The road has not been easy. Nothing comes easy in life. I am what I am because of hard work and God's blessing."

Muguku quit his job as a teacher in 1957, when he stumbled on his younger brother, Muhia Njoroge's payslip. "Muhia was a teacher like me but he earned Sh350 a month, while I was getting Sh280. I applied for a promotion but was denied. I would have to go to college for proper training as Muhia had done to earn more. The idea of going for further training didn't appeal to me." So he quit.

Muguku had been trained as a carpenter at Thika Technical School from 1950 to 1953.

His childhood "big dream" was to own a bicycle. He bought one with his first Sh220 salary as a teacher at Kapenguria Intermediate School in 1954. From his salary Then his dream grew. "I now wanted a car."

He nearly bought one in 1956, after he had been transferred to Kabianga. A mzungu colleague was selling his Hillman saloon for Sh3,000. Muguku raised Sh2,000 from his salary and box-guitars he used to make.

"I persuaded him to sell me the car for Sh2,000. He said even if I had Sh3,000 he would not accept because my salary was too low to maintain a car.

"The man was brutally honest. The annual increase for an untrained teacher was Sh5. I was in the wrong career. If I was to make it in life, I had to quit teaching."

He quit in 1957 to venture into full-time poultry keeping. "When I told the principal I was going away, he said I was crazy to leave a stable job for something I had not even started." With only a bicycle and scanty furniture, the ambitious young bachelor left Kabianga by train for his Rukubi home in Kikuyu.

His parents, Njoroge and Wambui, too, thought their first-born child had gone mad. "My father told me he had 200 chickens and all had died in an epidemic. 'You think yours will survive?' my father posed. I said 'yes'!"

"I had Sh3,000 to start me off. I built a simple poultry house and bought 100 layer chicks. My father loaned me money to buy the feeds.''

Two years later, Muguku was the proud owner of 400 layers, had built himself a two-bedroom timber house and was hunting for a bride.

His wife-hunting mission, using his treasured bicycle to traverse Kiambu hills and valleys, paid off when he met and fell in love with Leah Wanjiku, a teacher at Githunguri's Kagaa Primary School, more than 40 kilometres away.

The couple wedded in January 1960 and spent their honeymoon tending poultry and dairy cattle at their newly-acquired five-acre farm in Sigona. "We had no such thing as a honeymoon in the way it is done these days," Leah reminisces with a chuckle. She quit teaching in 1963 to join her husband in poultry keeping.

"I decided to resign one day after losing eggs worth a month's salary - theft by the farmhands".

In 1965, Muguku bought a 22-acre farm for Sh100,000 from a mzungu veterinary doctor, and then started a hatchery with a 9,000-egg incubator.

"I sold my chicks for Sh2 instead of the price of Sh4 at Kiguaru Farm. The demand was high and business brisk."

Customers were now talking about Nguku cia Muguku (Gikuyu for Muguku's poultry). "I changed the name from Star Ltd to Muguku Poultry Farm."

His idea of poultry keeping started budding at Kabianga College when the principal suggested he supplies him with eggs. "I had two hens and the principal suggested he could bring hybrid eggs and we share the chicks equally. He brought 13 white leghorn eggs and we got a brood of 12 chicks. Half were hens, half cocks. I said he was being unfair to me "One afternoon, when they were four months old, he came to my house with four workers and picked all the six hens. I said he was being unfair to me. He said I was a bachelor and did not need many eggs. I was almost fighting him.

"He said: 'Have you forgotten you're a Kikuyu and don't have the pass?' . I let him have the hens."

Within weeks the principal was transferred. "The new principal told me he was aware of the history of the six hens in his compound, and added: 'I love eggs and chicken but can't stand the sight of poultry in my compound.'

"He sold them to me for Sh15 each. I would supply eggs at 25cts each until the price of Sh90 was paid in full," Muguku recalls.

"The deal was good. Eggs were then going for only five cents. I realised that I could make a lot of money selling eggs."

The workaholic couple spend most of their time on the 27-acre farm at Sigona, with Muguku overseeing operations while Leah attends to customers, "who come from as far as Rwanda and Tanzania," she says. "The minimum number of chicks one can buy is one. We sell what one can afford."

Do they regret leaving their teaching jobs? "I would never be what I am today if I had remained a teacher," says Muguku. "Not one moment," Leah adds.

They don't flaunt their wealth. Instead, they roll up their sleeves and join their employees at work. Muguku is a founder member of the well-performing Kikuyu Township and Kidfarmaco primary schools.

Three of their children, first-born Muthanji, Njoroge and Wambui - all with their own families - keep poultry, with Muthanji running a branch of Muguku Poultry Farm in Ngong. "The rest have no interest in poultry keeping," says the septuagenarian father.

Son Muhia works as a pharmacist in the US. Son Njuru is studying medicine, daughter Njeri nursing and last-born son Maina business administration at universities in the US.

Poultry in Gikuyu is nguku, and many think the name Muguku may have something to do with chicken. Nay. "My name has nothing to do with poultry."

His paternal grandfather, Kamenwa wa Rwathia, had a special horn from which he drank the traditional brew muratina. The horn had a natural depression (muguku) at the brim. His comrades-in-muratina nicknamed him Muguku.

The old man's first son, Stephen Njoroge, named his first son Muguku. It stuck.