Ustawi Afrika Founder Doreen Irungu

Photo credit: Ustawi Afrika

Doreen Irungu is a force of empowerment in her home country of Kenya, working with rural women farmers to build sustainable livelihoods.

As the daughter born to coffee farmers, Doreen grew up seeing firsthand how planting, harvesting and selling coffee beans (one single crop) impacted families’ ability to provide as well as educate their children. The livelihood of her family as well as others depended upon how much they produced and getting paid for it.

“The process of picking coffee is also a very tedious process, so the sustainability of our household could depend on coffee, on a bigger portion of it because we were waiting on those days that the coffee was being paid, because it is not paid once it is delivered. There was a long process and so many waiting days that people had to wait.”

Doreen goes on to share in the episode that when her family was not paid for their delivery one year as she transitioned from primary school to high school, she was not able to attend the school of her choice. The impact that it had on her family and her education is something that would later inspire her work as an adult.

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Building Sustainable Livelihoods For Rural Farmers in Kenya

Doreen founded Ustawi Afrika in 2019 after years of working in the community that included provided food to families in need. One day when she worked with others to teach women how to grow their own food that would lessen their dependability on other sources, she says it was a game changer.

“I started realizing around 2015, 2016 that the people we were serving that had already began developing the dependency in mindset and each and every day you could see them queuing in our queues waiting to be given these aids. One day I realized like most of the people coming from the aids were very young. These are women 35 to around 40, and even below 35. And most of them had this kind of mindset like, “Once we come, we must go home with something. We came for food and we want food.”

She says this was a turning point when she began shifting to wanting to solve problems around food insecurity by empowering women in rural areas to grow their own food and also create sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their families.

Since starting Ustawi Afrika, the organization has established more than 350 clusters of women farmers in Kenya, built community boreholes and water reservoirs, enabling over 200 rural farmers to access clean water and facilitated access to financial institutions and markets, helping women-owned agribusinesses thrive, among other accomplishments.

Listen to the full episode as Doreen shares more about her work.