Stories tagged: Shamba Shape Up

Shamba Chef Arrives To Give Kenya Cleaner, Healthier Cooking

A new reality TV show from the producers of Shamba Shape Up is here to combat poor nutrition and household pollution in Kenya, Vanessa Mukhebi of Mediae Company reports.

A choking cloud of smoke greets us as we enter the room. Cramped, poorly ventilated and rectangular in shape, the room is darkened by scorched walls as black as night. As we familiarise ourselves with our newly-found surrounding, a pungent smell of burning wet firewood dissipates from the left corner of the room, dwindling the little supply of fresh air from the half-open window above the cooking station. Though it is frugally furnished, it is tidily kept, clean and telling of a simplistic lifestyle. This is Doris’ kitchen that we have just stepped into.

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Doris, or ‘Mama Britney’, as she is commonly referred to, is a mother of two young children who lives in Luanda, situated south-west of Vihiga County in Kenya, whilst her husband works in the capital city. Her son, shy of his two-year birthday, cradles her leg unsure of the strangers who have just entered their homestead.

When Mama Britney smiles her well-formed and even white teeth brighten up her whole face. But as she describes to us the problems she faces in her kitchen environment, she is suddenly filled with distress. She spends more money on fuel than food, which is not only a financial strain, but affects her family’s nutrition and health. Sniffling, runny noses and irritated eyes are typically experienced by her children caused by the harmful fumes emitted from her traditional three-stone jiko, Swahili for stove. Sadly, this is characteristic of households across Kenya.

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She like 15 million other Kenyans, are exposed daily to high levels of household air pollution (HAP) from using inefficient cooking fuels such as firewood and charcoal, and simple cook stoves. According to PS Kenya, illnesses attributable to HAP are the second leading cause of death in the country, leading to over 40 per cent of premature deaths amongst children. Moreover, inefficient stoves and fuels place economic burdens on families, spending up to 30 per cent of their income on purchasing fuels.

At the same time, nutrition is a limiting factor for rural Kenyans, and costs the country millions of dollars in lost earnings and health complications, such as stunting and low brain development. Rural Kenyans eat a diet that is high in starch, low in protein and vitamins, and that does not vary. The result being that 35 per cent of children under five are stunted, millions are micronutrient deficient, not only young children but also adults and in particular lactating mothers, and it’s the poorer families who suffer the most.

With such alarming figures, it is clear that the need for an alternative, cleaner, fuel efficient and healthier option for cooking is growing increasingly paramount in Kenya.

This is where we come into play.

Shamba Chef is the new sister TV program to Shamba Shape Up, which will primarily focus on cleaner and more efficient cook stove adoption, as well as tackling wider issues associated with nutrition. Shot throughout Kenya, the series will delve into real households to explore new ways to cook, making it quicker, safer, cleaner and at half the cost.

Supported by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Shamba Chef is produced by The Mediae Company and will air in both English and Swahili on Citizen TV Kenya over the course of 13 episodes.

It will be dedicated to rural and peri-urban women such as Mama Britney, transforming their kitchens, conducting cook-offs between neighbours and featuring popular Kenyan chefs who will highlight cultural food preferences from around the country, and demonstrate how to cook tasty and nutritious meals from locally available food. It will also include nutrition experts promoting the benefits of a well-balanced diet and how to maximise nutritional opportunities for the family by growing your own food.

Viewers at home will be able to subscribe to the show’s mobile information service and call centre, iChef, to get additional content on where to purchase energy saving cookstoves of their own as well as nutrition tips.

The aim of the show is to improve their cooking methods, warm them up to changing their practices around their family’s health and nutrition, and to fuel the uptake of cleaner more efficient cookstoves.

 

However, it all boils down to the fact that changing food practices is in many ways more difficult than changing agricultural practices. In both, traditional practices may be slow to change in the face of a rapidly changing environment. Dietary incentives and effects are all much less obvious. The needs are often not perceived and established tastes are felt to be inviolable. Daily routines are precious and food choices are permeated by status factors; meat is culturally perceived as a ‘man’s meal’.shamba-chef

But we believe that the proof to affect change is in the pudding! Mediae has a proven track record of delivering media productions that are highly effective at impacting on people’s knowledge, attitudes and practice. For instance, in 2016, 80 per cent of the people who watched Shamba Shape Up learnt something new from it, and 43 per cent of the audience actually adopted a new practice they learnt on the program. Building off this, the program is a potential recipe for success.

So watch Shamba Chef, as we meet families, enter their homes, and find out what happens in Kenyan kitchens. It is sure to be worth its salt!

Shamba Chef airs Sundays and Thursdays at 1:30pm on Citizen TV Kenya. For more information, visit the Shamba Chef website, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Putting the Answers to Successful Farming at Young People’s Fingertips

In this guest blog post, Vanessa Mukhebi of Mediae – the production company behind agricultural reality TV shows Shamba Shape Up and Don’t Lose the Plot – discusses the digital innovations helping farmers with agronomic and budgeting challenges. By harnessing the digital boom, she argues that more African youth can be enticed into agricultural careers.

It is often said that youth carry the potential to transform agricultural productivity and contribute to global food security for a booming population that is set to increase by two billion by 2050. However, debating the future of farming and rural development is pointless without the willingness of the youth themselves to engage in the sector. This potential can only be realised through an image overhaul of farming.

Yet several solutions to this challenge exist right in their back pockets.

The drawback of farming-related careers in preference for white collared employment in urban areas, is partly on account of the societal prejudices and misconceptions held about such careers, as well as the limited knowledge about the opportunities available in agricultural industry that are economically prosperous.

Fortunately, through rapid advancement in information and communication technologies, and increased access to the internet through mobile devices, agriculture in the developing world has become a vibrant field full of effective and creative innovations.

And with young people already predisposed to this digital revolution, these solutions provide unparalleled access to information to help them take advantage of the exciting opportunities within the industry.

In countries like Kenya, where overstretched extension services are unable to adequately support producers, mobile solutions such as iShamba, offer the ability to disseminate timely and relevant information regarding production, input supplies, weather updates and market price information.

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Additionally, the farmer information and advisory service is equipped with a call centre staffed with agricultural experts, where farmers can SMS or call to get instant advice seven days a week.

Farming communities can also exchange information with each other through the service’s location-based WhatsApp groups and get advice from iShamba’s agricultural experts on best farming practices. Simon Mwangi, a young farmer from Nyeri, Kenya, says that the platform helped him venture into farming.“Thanks to iShamba’s agronomic advice, I managed to grow tomatoes for the first time. I have already started harvesting my tomatoes and they are doing well.” 

Though the platform is highly interactive, the challenge remains on how best to engage youth.

The appeal of farming to young people hinges on its ability to be recast and marketed as a profitable enterprise; agribusiness has to be promoted in favour of agriculture.

Our newest reality television show called Don’t Lose the Plot is aiming to do just that – stem the exodus of rural youth to urban areas and encourage them into agribusiness.

Set on a sprawling farm on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, the show follows four young farmers from Kenya and Tanzania, who are given one acre plots to farm side-by-side for nine months. At the end, the farmer with the most profitable and sustainable business wins an agricultural investment worth US$10,000.

Each young farmer had access to a panel of advisors that critiqued their ideas and approach while encouraging them to use modern, labour saving techniques to make the most of their land. After developing a business plan for their farm, they got access to financing, set up their farms, managed them and marketed their produce profitably.

Ken, one of the contestants from Kenya, lauded the show for exposing him to the opportunities that young people such as himself have at their disposal to improve their livelihoods. “I see this competition as an eye opener, to the resources that we have in our country. To increase food security, and to try to solve the unemployment issue amongst youth. I think I’m doing something great here.”

Nevertheless, what was evident right from the start is that young farmers need assistance in creating realistic budgets and managing their finances.

Enter Budget Mkononi, the web-based agricultural budgeting tool initiated by the producers of Don’t Lose the Plot, The Mediae Company, and Mercy Corps AgriFin Accelerate.

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The tool allows young aspiring and inexperienced farmers to view estimated costs and profits from various commodities that are high-value and short-term such as broilers and onions.

Through Budget Mkononi, hopeful entrepreneurs can explore the relative merits of each and visualise their cash flow requirements for the duration of the farming cycle, showing young farmers how to farm in a productive and sustainable manner.

Developed by Regulus Ltd, the tool is designed specifically for use on mobile devices and went through several stages of user-testing to ensure that it met the needs of its target audience.  The interactive functionality also allows farmers to customise their budgets based on their specific circumstances.

What’s apparent is that with such solutions at hand, the days that farming was the domain of the uneducated are gone.

Connectivity through ICTs enables solutions such as iShamba and Budget Mkononi to shape a new frontier of farming that is young, vibrant and innovative. All youth need to know, is that success is within their reach – right under their fingertips.

A longer version of this article first appeared in the World Farmers’ Organisation Farmletter.

Plotting New Ways to Encourage Youth into Farming through Television

Vanessa Mukhebi of Mediae Company, reports for Farming First on the latest TV series from the production company that created Shamba Shape Up.

We’ve all seen it before. The archetypal symbol of agriculture in Africa is more often than not an elderly African woman spending back-breaking hours in the sweltering sub-Saharan heat tending to her crop fields with a hoe in hand.

The problem with this imagery is not necessarily in its ubiquity, but that it is representative of an underlying issue in the sector: there is a lacklustre perception of agriculture amongst young people. Whilst there are several push factors such as limited access to capital and land, for majority of the world’s youth, agriculture isn’t considered as a viable or ‘cool’ career venture. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the average age of farmers in Africa is about 60, despite the fact that 60 per cent of Africa’s population is under 24 years of age. Continue reading

#IamAg! Meet Judy, Production Manager at Shamba Shape Up

This is the first post in our new series “I am Agriculture”, that showcases the many careers available to young people in agriculture. Today’s post comes from Judy Nyawira, who is the production manager for the Kenyan TV show “Shamba Shape Up”.

Ever since I was a young girl, I always dreamed of being on television. That was considered the most prestigious job you could get. I admired how perfectly polished news presenters like Catherine Kasavuli articulated the day’s headlines, and how her confidence and elegance shone through her body language. At high school, I developed a special interest in languages and world history, in the hope of becoming a news caster myself one day. Little did I know about the wide array of opportunities that existed beyond being a news anchor. I ended up at the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication where I initially set out to study broadcast journalism, but then found myself in film and TV production. Even though I did not intend to do this course, it turned out in my favour because I couldn’t be happier working on Shamba Shape Up as a production manager.

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