Growing up in Mathira, Nyeri County in 1950s, we found remnants of a horticultural infrastructure that had grown, processed and packaged vegetables for dispatch to World War II warfronts in early 1940s.
Most of Mathira is a rolling plateau, with many rivers and streams flowing from snow-capped Mt Kenya down fairly wide irrigable valleys.
Climate change may, however, have diminished these blessings in recent decades.
British War Office had funded the Mathira project that saw swamps cleared and drained, irrigation canals and dams constructed. Two of these dams, Ruthagati and Hohwe, have remained useful to this day.
All-weather feeder murram roads were developed to ferry produce using trucks and oxen wagons to a new factory constructed adjacent to Karatina railway station. Power was supplied by the still active nearby 3MW Sagana hydro plant downstream of Marua bridge.
The factory dried and packaged vegetables to be railed direct to Mombasa port for shipment to various warfronts, while others were railed to Nanyuki war depots for trucking north to Ethiopia where allied forces were fighting occupying Italian forces.
When the war ended in 1945, the government planned to sell the factory to wazungu investors, but Nyeri 'Young Turks' just arrived from the war insisted on locals buying shares. To harden their demands, they instigated a major boycott by farmers. The government called their bluff and closed the factory, dismantling it for reassembly at Naivasha, to serve white farmers.
A parallel industry owned by British War Office was Kenya Industrial Manufacturing Board (Kimbo) in Nairobi, which made cooking fat and toiletries for the war. This was sold to Unilever’s East African Industries when the war ended.
Mathira veterans from the war had come back full of dreams, enterprise and creativity. With Karatina factory closed, they trucked vegetables to Nairobi Wholesale Market, making Mathira the main vegetable supplier to Nairobi.
Vegetables remained the key Mathira cash crop until coffee and tea were introduced in 1957 after cooling down of the Mau Mau crisis and implementation of land consolidation. Prior to this, only Europeans were legally permitted to grow coffee and tea, with Africans providing labour.
The 1940s Mathira vegetable project was a pioneer integrated irrigation scheme in Kenya, followed in the 1950s by Mwea, Yatta, Hola and Marigat, all of which were developed using forced Mau Mau detainee labour.
The Mathira narrative is intended to demonstrate that Kenya’s limping crop value chains can be revived and sustained if we get down to serious planning and resourcing. Simply dust off the old files to gain insight into how it all worked.
