A small farmers’ group in Matathia Village, Lari, Kiambu County, has grown from a modest church-based initiative into a successful export business supplying dried vegetables to international markets.
The Cheer Up Program, founded in 2003 by nine farmers seeking to cut post-harvest losses, now processes and exports a variety of dried vegetables and fruits to Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
Using locally built solar dryers, the group preserves indigenous vegetables such as managu, terere, and saga, alongside sukuma wiki, spinach, and cabbages. They have also expanded into drying herbs like rosemary and stinging nettle, and producing nutritious porridge flour from blended banana, cassava, and vegetable powders.
Locally, a kilo of dried sukuma or spinach fetches about Ksh700, while rarer vegetables like saga go for around Ksh800. To meet the growing demand, the group now partners with over 40 contracted farmers across Kiambu, who earn roughly Ksh50 for every kilo of fresh produce they supply.
Each vegetable type yields about one tonne every three days, with cabbages producing up to 1.5 tonnes within the same period. The farmers follow rigorous processing standards from selection and blanching to cooling and solar drying ensuring their products meet international quality benchmarks.
Despite challenges such as poor road networks and limited access to credit, the Cheer Up Program has become a lifeline for many families in Lari. The initiative has provided a stable source of income, reduced food waste, and offered a blueprint for sustainable farming in Kiambu.
According to the group’s members, unity, continuous training, and a shared vision have been key to their success.
As Kenya’s fresh vegetable exports face stricter international regulations and fluctuating demand, many small-scale farmers are now looking to value addition as a safer, more profitable path. The Cheer Up Programme stands as a powerful example of how innovation and teamwork can turn local farming into a global business and inspire a new generation of agripreneurs in Kiambu County.
