Sustainable Rural Livelihood

Caren Cianthuni Mate is all praises for a crop that is hardly viewed as a source of livelihoods in the mount Kenya region. Sisal.

It is a typical hot late-August day in Nkubu, Meru county. Farm owners are busy harvesting the last stock of maize from their farms, the searing sun unrelenting on their backs. Their faces speak of years of hard toil motivated by hopes of a bright future.

When a group of 15 women in Embu county entured into making briquettes out of charcoal dust, they were trying to solve an immediate household problem of unaffordable fuel.