Standard Group reaches out with Transform Kenya Food Security conversation

Panelists for the Transform Kenya Food Security forum

Standard Group in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Twiga Foods, Coopers Kenya, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and Strathmore Business School has finalised preparations for the Transform Kenya Food Security forum.

The Transform Kenya Food Security event comes a week after World Food Day that was celebrated on 16th October 2018. It will be held on Thursday 25th October, 2018 at the Strathmore Business School.

This is the third edition of the Transform Kenya campaign after the first one on June 5, 2018 in Kwale County, focusing on environment. The event coincided with the World Environmental Day and was attended by Kwale Governor Salim Mvurya among others. The second edition was held on September 6, 2018 at Strathmore, Nairobi.

Transform Kenya aims to influence new ways of doing things by according as many Kenyans as possible the opportunity to contribute to the debate on national development.

The Standard Group amplifies these conversations on print, radio, TV and online platforms to spur national conversation across a wide range of selected topics.

Using the hashtag #TransformKenyaSG, the forum will be live on KTN NEWS from 6 to 9pm and will be highly interactive as the moderator will field questions to panelists from both audience and social media engagements. The event will be hosted by KTN’s Sharon Momanyi who will be assisted by Yusuf Ibrahim and Mike Gitonga.

Panelists will be Principal Secretary State Department of Agricultural Research Prof. Hamadi Iddi Boga, Nyandarua County Governor Francis Kimemia, FAO representative in Kenya Gabriel Rugalema, Chief Operating Officer for Twiga Foods Kikonde Mwatela, Food Produce expert Okisegere Ojepat and University of Nairobi lecturer Prof. Margaret Jesang Hutchinson.

Kikonde Mwatela is an entrepreneur, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer for Twiga Foods. He is a key principal in one of Africa’s most innovative companies managing its supply chain operations from both a planning and performance management capacity.

Twiga Foods is a technology firm, focused on linking Africa’s rural farmers to fast growing urban markets and vice versa. Kikonde has held brief over Twiga’s vast logistics, purchases and sales operations since inception three years ago, helping to grow Twiga’s purchase footprint to 14,000 farmers and sales footprint to 5,000 vendors while increasing Twiga’s product portfolio and managing a fast growing employee base.

“We believe that Africa’s capacity to produce food is held back by lack of reliable access to domestic markets. The focus of this generation ought to be to leverage technology to make Africa’s agricultural markets more certain for the large number of farmers willing and able to produce for them. Africa is not food insecure, Africa is market and logistics insecure,” says Mwatela Kikonde.