Emma Nganga used to work in the corporate world. She used to suit up every day and head into Nairobi’s business district where she was a PR associate and represented large enterprises in multi-million dollar deals. You wouldn’t know that by looking at her now – she wears gumboots and farming clothes and is the owner of her own dairy farm. She turned her back on the corporate business world after 20 years and she couldn’t be happier.

I’d always had the wish to do something for myself, build a brand for myself. So I decided to go into farming and dairy farming specifically. The idea is to have a farm where I’m in control of the production process, right from the beginning rearing the cow, milking the milk and processing it. We process the milk into yoghurt and what we call Mala, or fermented milk. We also sell fresh milk,” Emma says.

She hasn’t been this successful though – Emma admits to not planning well and that the change of careers was a bigger step than she had thought. Luckily, she didn’t have to look far for help, though – financial aid organisation Thriive helped her with her farming equipment.

Leonard Chumo Felix from Thriive explains how their non-cash repayment loans work:

Thriive is a pay-for-it social loan programme which is aimed to promote corporate social responsibility. It’s a unique programme that helps the communities around the people we loan money to. For example, we buy equipment for an entrepreneur who then pays for it to the community through charity, commodities and services produced by equipment that we purchased to them.

Basically, Emma repays her loan by providing the community and local school with free dairy products from her farm. This not only lets her repay her loan without spending money but also creates a market for her products. It also helps her not to waste any dairy products that would normally have gone to waste and had to be thrown away.

Emma has also opened a small shop in Nairobi near a famous stadium. It allows her to get her product into the market in a very central location, and more and more people now have access to fresh dairy products. She’s also kept the marketing in-house as she can hire people that she trusts and they will be able to focus solely on marketing her products. Sometimes keeping things cosy is the best way forward.

Adopted from the Africa report