Kiringai Kamau
Kiringai, agricultural economist, social entrepreneur, and promoter of capacity building in ICT and Agriculture. He infuses agripreneurship in the use of value chain aligned ICT driven data integration to agriculture and sustainable development. He focuses on policy formulation to promote value chain driven, ICT inspired design thinking for institutional formations anchored on data for Agriculture.
Kiringai founded the GODAN’s Programme for Capacity Development in Africa (GP4CD) and the African arm of Ycenter, an American Corporate that transforms learning through Human Centered Design thinking. He combines strengths from these organizations to support open data thinking among sectoral actors in academia, policy, development and research spaces to help implement knowledge-inspired value chain-driven transformation initiatives.
A champion of open data centered, Youth-Led, Extension and Advisory for Development (YouLead) to anchor his thinking in agricultural sector transformation using farmer based, farmer-owned agribusiness hubs (FarmHubs) which provide future focused dynamics for intra-country rooted economic transformation. He is also the leader of the Capacity Building Sub-Committee of the Open Data on Agriculture and Nutrition, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries. He infuses practical value chain analysis and knowledge management, within his practice of agricultural economics by integrating practical farming which he does, using his value chain ICT4D/ICT4Ag FarmHub perspective
Dr. Ikechi Agbugba – Senior Advisor at Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN)
With a background in marketing and agribusiness management, Dr Ikechi’s expertise focuses on the economics of agriculture, entrepreneurship development, technology in agriculture, and food chain security. He is a distinguished academic with extensive experience as a researcher, development officer, visiting professor, guest lecturer, mentor, senior lecturer and adjunct professor.
Dr Ikechi has been recognised for his contributions to the agriculture sector, including the Global Mentor of Change Award, Global Emerging Leader and the Agro-Economist of the Year Excellence Award. Also, he features as an external examiner at the University of Fort Hare, a roving ambassador with the State of the African Diaspora, and co-founder to some organisations such as the Africa Organisation of Technology in Agriculture (AOTA) organiser of the International Conference on Business Models in Agriculture (IBMA), Kigali Rwanda and AgriEn Zambia, to mention a few.
Dr Ikechi’s research focuses on precision agriculture and its role in feeding a growing population while ensuring profitability, sustainability, and environmental protection. He emphasises the importance of youth engagement in agriculture and proposes brain re-engineering and reimagination to change the negative perception that many African youths have towards agriculture.
Overall, Dr Ikechi’s contributions to the industry have been significant, and he continues to make an impact through his work with GODAN, AOTA and AgriEn, as well as in the academia and research domains. It must be underscored that his passion for the agriculture space has made him a highly respected and valued industry member.
Felix Kimani – Project Manager
14 years’ experience with a thorough understanding of all areas Business and Strategic Management with skills in: Project Management, Operations, Supply Chain Management, Human Resource Management, Business Development, Research and Intelligence.
Hellen Kamba
Farm manager at Shambah Dairy with over 10 years experience dairy goat farming. Coordinates all farm activities including but not limited to training farmers on dairy goat keeping which include:
- Housing
- Feeding
- Diseases and disease management
- Animal care
- Clean milk production
- Record keeping
I also coordinate farm hub activities that relate to GALS.
An accountant with Self-taught skills in Market Research (Data Collection, Cleaning, Analysis and Presentation) and Graphics Design. He works as a FarmHub Manager and Community Outreach Coordinator leading the Gender Action Learning system (GALS) and implementation of Grassroots Agribusiness initiatives together with coordination of eLearning Engagements.
Ruth Wanjiru
Ruth is an educationist with experience in pedagogy in areas of action training methodologies and training of trainers. (TOT) A registered Principal trainer with TVET, she has a particular interest in curriculum development and facilitating training in the area of business development and practical entrepreneurship.
Besides being a seasoned trainer, she is a business mentor who combines deep compassion for youth and women entrepreneurs to enable them to apply best business practices that will lead to growth and sustainability.
Ruth has worked closely with Strathmore Business School(SBS)Executive Education as an associate trainer and facilitator of the enterprise development program, a capacity development program for entrepreneurs.
Mentor with IbizAfica, a Standard chartered woman in Tech incubator are supporting female lead entrepreneurial teams bu providing much needed training and mentorship.
Patrick Kamau
A software developer with a structured approach to harnessing and sourcing data to inform scientific outcomes and business decisions. I have experience in analysing structured data and working with proven methods to extract and culture insights on key issues that affect efficacy and performance in addition to creating the applications that make this achievable.
James Nyakera
Embedded system developer (Innovator ) I have come up with a number of systems in the following areas, security, timing, vending machines, gsm and wed based automation, farming systems, industrial machine automation, water and irrigation, wireless system for machines communications among others. I frequently come up with fresh innovations/automation.
In the fight against COVID-19 , I have developed the automatic hand washing machine, a computerized system designed for dispensing liquid soap and water automatically at the programmed intervals. Links below are some of the media houses in Kenya and outside Kenya who have covered some of my innovations
https://www.nlplatform.com/initiatives/kenyan-graduate-invents-hands-free-water-dispenser (NETHERLAND)
https://www.the-star.co.ke/counties/central/2020-04-21-muranga-it-graduate-makes-automatic-handwashing-gadget/ (STAR NEWSPAPER)
https://www.pd.co.ke/news/man-invents-automatic-hand-washing-machine-33102/ (PEOPLE DAILY)
https://t.co/quH8qnnNwv?amp=1 (STANDARD NEWSPAPER)
Joseph Kirai
A statistician With a demonstrated history of working in research and particularly health. I have worked mostly in populations that struggle financially on a daily basis to help them in behavior change on health through well-formulated behavioral interventions. I believe in an evidence-based approach to clearly understand what works well. I am a qualitative and quantitative data analyst with an interest in project monitoring and evaluation which am currently pursuing at the Master’s level.