From Cotton to Coffee: Reclaiming Nyanza’s Right to Compete
The late Mzee Marcus Ogonda, a former senior police officer in Thika, remains a quiet but powerful symbol of what could have been in Nyanza’s agricultural story. In my village of Ukwala, he introduced seedless oranges and coffee, proving through lived experience that coffee can thrive in Ugenya. His work challenged the long-held myth that Nyanza is somehow unsuitable for high-value crops. Yet, despite such evidence, the region has historically been left out of Kenya’s most lucrative agricultural value chains.