Kapkiyai - C

Located in the picturesque Nandi hills - also known as home of champions, the cooperative is nestled atop one of the topmost hills in the region. Nandi County is home to many world record holders in athletics, including Kipchoge Keino, Henry Rono, Eliud Kipchoge, Pamela Jelimo, Janeth Jepkosgei, Moses Tanui, Julius Yego, Jairus Birech, Conseslus Kipruto and Bernard Lagat.
If you were to visit Kapkiyai Farmers Cooperative a few years ago, you might have noticed something striking: all 38 members were men. At the time, women existed on the periphery of the coffee industry in Kapkiyai. Although women played essential roles to coffee production, such as picking ripe cherries and carrying the loads down the hills after harvest, men owned the coffee trees, decision-making process, and the profits reaped from their production.

In 2010, Kapkiyai began to receive support from the Coffee Initiative, and the training in both agronomy and the management of the cooperative and wet mill emphasized gender inclusion in the coffee industry. With time, Kapkiyai management began to see the potential of including women in the cooperative. “Women are the ones that look after the children. They are the ones that work on the farms. They are the ones that bring the coffee down the hills (to the cooperative for processing). It was time for them to get involved in sales,” said Chairman David Saina. Kapkiyai held a special general meeting to discuss the advice put forth by the Coffee Initiative business advisors. At the meeting, which consisted of both board members and farmers, the cooperative passed the Kapkiyai Women in Coffee Resolution, granting women the right to become full contributing members in the cooperative. Following the decision, a number of husbands gave their wives a segment of their own trees. Today, 106 of the 398 members of the Kapkiyai Farmers Cooperative Society are women. Women also produced 55,000 kilograms of the 200,114 total cherry produced by Kapkiyai in 2015, a contribution that played a significant role in helping the cooperative purchase an eco-pulper, a new pulping machine that processes 1,500 kilograms of coffee cherry per hour. “Without women, we would not have this machine,” said Chairman Saina.

Women have also made inroads into the cooperative’s decision-making process by rising into leadership positions. Dorcas Jeptanui is both the chairlady of the Women in Coffee group and a member of the cooperative’s management committee. Overtime and in 2018 the women launched the first Fairtrade certified women only coffee in the region an initiative as Vava Coffee we were humbled to be a part of. As part of the project deliverables was increasing coffee productivity & quality by training the women and male coffee farmers  on Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) increasing coffee yield from an average of 1.8kg of cherry per coffee bush to 3kg of cherry per coffee bush. The quality of the women coffee has also increased tremendously where more than 70% of production form premium grades (AA, AB & PB) from 25% of total production at project start.