Best friends Brian Bett and Taita Ng’etich were enjoying their first semester in university – until they ran out of money. “It’s always exciting starting college and there is so much going on so it was a lot of fun,” says Ng’etich. “But then we ran low on cash and we didn’t want to go back to our parents offering explanations. We decided to start a business instead to try and make our own money.”
They pooled resources with four other students and went into a venture growing tomatoes in Loitokitok, a lush, wind-swept town at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro on the Kenya-Tanzania border.
The scheme ended in disaster when the entire crop was wiped out by floods, but that experience gave the pair the idea of setting up a greenhouse business – one that has won a string of awards and earned them an audience with President Barack Obama during the global entrepreneurship summit in Nairobi in July.
Built from local material – which drove down costs – the greenhouse is fitted with sensors that monitor temperature, humidity and soil moisture, and sends text messages to farmers alerting them to any changes they need to make to conditions inside.