Meet Forbes Powerful Kenyan Women Who Quit Their Well Paying IT Jobs

If quitting a job would have you classified in a Forbes List many people would have quit long ago.

On the same line, how would it feel being listed in Forbes Magazine for an achievement you have made?

Elated I suppose. This is what three women felt as they appeared on the list of ‘The 20 Youngest Power Women In Africa 2014.’

The list that describes them as ‘the continent’s emerging power brokers, the Amazons to watch, and the custodians of tomorrow’ was released on 4th December 2014.

Meet Linda Kwamboka, Susan Oguya and Jamila Abass. They are co-founders of M-Farm an award-winning software solution and agribusiness company that connects Kenyan farmers.

The trio’s background is in IT and their software enables farmers to easily access current prices of different crops in specific markets throughout Kenya.

These were ladies with well paying job but decided to quit and concentrate on the app which started bringing in the money an year after its inception.

Linda Kwamboka Omwenga is responsible for product development and marketing. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Information Technology from Strathmore University. At the same university, she heads the Student Enterprise Program which nurtures businesses run by students on campus.

She grew up in a rural area but always knew that she was not meant to sit behind a desk and work on a course that had no measurable impact on society. She always dreamt of establishing a company of her own that would create meaning for the society in which she lives.

Susan Oguya is referred to as the ‘Research Junkie’ in the company. She is a mobile apps developer who has had the chance to work with Safaricom, Microsoft, Rivotek and many other successful companies.

She grew up on a farm in western Kenya and at 15 the only access to a computer was when her uncle visited from Nairobi.

When she got to a university, she studied Bachelors in Business Information Technology and majored in IT, her minor was in Business. She had an idea for a mobile phone app that would help farmers like her parents.

But Oguya was one of only 10 women in her department of 80 undertaking STEM-related discipline. Her teachers doubted her ability to actually program this app she’d thought of.

A lot of skepticism she received was largely attributed to the fact that she was a woman so she had to wait until her 3rd year when she ran into a computer researcher named Jessica Colaco.

She finally got the encouragement, mentoring and opportunity to develop her farming app idea.

Jamila Abass, the CEO, is a Software Engineer with 4 years experience in web development on born in North Eastern in a poor family of 19 children.

“When I was a kid, my brother and I used to grow coriander and kales next to our well and sell it to the neighbors. The dry land did not deter me from farming. My entrepreneurial journey started at an early age and did not stop there,” she reveals

“In 2010, I co-founded M-Farm and quit my job at Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI/University of Washington) where I worked as a Medical Records Systems developer.”

And what led to them coming up with M-Farm?

“We were going through a newspaper article, which highlighted the challenges farmers go through to access the market. Most of them do not make decent earnings from their efforts because of middlemen who buy from them at lower prices and sell to the market making huge profits. We began thinking of ways to assist such farmers and decided to come up with a mobile service platform.  that could link farmers to the market,” they revealed to How We Made it in Africa

But how did they get to start the company without any capital?

“Together we started the M-Farm software solution and we entered the IPO48 competition, a 48 hour boot-camp event aimed at giving web/mobile start-ups a platform to launch their companies. We beat 37 other entrants and won the competition walking away with the €10,000 prize as capital investment,” says Ms. Abass

Even though the competition was meant for men, they were very lucky to have won it.

And with their strong IT background you would think that they did not have any challenges but they did

“One of the challenges faced was the illiteracy of farmers, as they trained them. But their gender proved to be another serious challenge,” reports The African Professional magazine

Ms. Oguya says that, “They wondered why women had to come to train them about how to use a mobile phone. So we had to convince them that we are farmer’s kids and we have studied and we are giving back to the society.”

Towards the end of 2013, the M-Pesa Foundation announced a KSh. 20 million grant to M-Farm.

Their company currently has a staff of 18 people, and is serving more than 7,000 farmers across Africa. Doing good is what pushes them ahead and they have plans to extend the company in east Africa 5 years from now

Abass is now focused on the export market and has been in the UK to speak to large retailers who are keen to be more responsible in the way that they source their products.

In addition to taking a transaction fee, MFarm has also been selling its data to research organizations looking at consumer behavior and food scarcity.

Any lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs?

“Rather than sitting down and thinking how you are going to do something, just do it,” advices Susan Oguya.

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