Biashara Mashinani: One Teacher’s Journey from the Classroom to Successful Entrepreneur

When curtains closed on 2019 on New Year’s Eve, and spectacular fireworks filled the skies with bursts of colour, few on the planet realized they had just bid business as usual goodbye. Fewer still knew that as the clock struck midnight, the world would be ushering in a characterdefining year, and a terrifying virus that would upend life as the human species had come to know it.

Farhiya Choya, 42, from Karare in Songa Community Conservancy in Marsabit County, found herself in a predicament many across the globe faced in 2020. Being a widow with two children, monthly salary delays had left her in a bind. As her unpaid bills mounted, depending solely on income from her job became untenable. She was employed as an Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) teacher at Karare Primary School, but pandemic-related school closures had disrupted learning.

Confined to her home, like many across the world, she experienced varying degrees of cabin fever. What she found more distressing, however, was the uncertainty of not knowing when her next paycheck would arrive. Necessity became the mother of invention for Farhiya, and the daily struggle to survive fathered her evolution. She elected to convert the one resource she had in abundance—free time—into income. With the Ksh 15,000 she had in savings, Farhiya rented a retail shop at Karare Market Center, and stocked it with fast-moving groceries, to generate additional income to support herself and her two children.

In 2021, she discovered NRT Trading’s Biashara Mashinani Program through the Conservancy’s management, and attended the Program’s intensive three-day training, gaining skills in entrepreneurship, finance management, and business planning. These she applied while running her retail shop, whose profits grew gradually, enabling her to save a little each month.

Farhiya became inspired to open a savings account with the Northern Rangelands Savings and Credit Cooperative (NR Sacco), an independent, community-owned, and membership-driven organisation, which receives oversight, technical support, and training from NRT Trading. The Sacco partners with NRT member community conservancies to provide access to bespoke financial services, including savings facilities, affordable loans, business coaching, and investment opportunities.

After consistently saving with NR Sacco, Farhiya became eligible for her first loan of Ksh 25,000, whose issuance was approved at a critical time when a biting drought had decimated the livestock herds of northern Kenya’s communities, adversely impacting their main source of livelihood. “Using the loan, I stocked my shop with various foods and cereals,” Farhiya explains as she cheerfully attends to a customer at her shop, whose revenue sustains her family. Income from her business ranges between Ksh 500 on bad days and Ksh 3,000 on good days.

Farhiya plans to use future NR Sacco loans to expand her business. She is one of 3,594 women who have benefited from the Sacco, which has disbursed over Ksh 186 million in loans to its members over the last six years. Farhiya has retained her teaching job. When school is on, her cousin manages the shop. After classes end, Farhiya takes over.

Purposely designed to operate at the grassroots level and uplift the indigenous communities we serve, Biashara Mashinani and NR Sacco continue to empower thousands like Farhiya, enabling them to diversify their sources of income and increase their resilience.