Brayan_Jk
Senior Member
- Mar 28, 2025
- 187
- 197
By Josephine Christopher
Josephine Christopher is a senior business journalist for The Citizen and Mwananchi newspapers
Mwananchi Communications Limited
After a failed poultry venture left him in debt and despair, Brayan Kimaro transformed his hard-earned lessons into Fuga, app and and Fuga calculator to help farmers plan costs, track feed, schedule vaccinations, and record production data
Dar es Salaam. In 2021, in Arusha, a young man named Brayan Kimaro stood on his poultry farm staring at a coop full of half-grown chickens.
The chickens were still short of the right weight for selling, and yet, the feed had run out; worse still, he had no money left.
The numbers, so promising on paper, had crashed in reality. What was originally meant to be a strategic investment in dual-purpose chickens had come to become a personal and financial crisis.
"Emotionally, it was devastating. I felt deep regret and helplessness, thinking, maybe this isn't for me," he recalls. According to Brayan, previously, he calculated that he could earn twice as much by keeping dual-purpose chickens instead of broilers; however, just two months later, feed prices rose, and his finances evaporated.
"So as you can imagine, I had to incur debts so that I could sustain the bird's weight...I took some money from friends to sustain feeding the chicks for the remaining time, and that put me in a bad spot," he said.
He remembers so well that feeling of failure - the humiliation, the helplessness, the fear that he would never make it in poultry farming after all.
And what Bravan did not know then was that this difficult chapter would mark the beginning of something far greater: a digital solution that would change the lives of poultry farmers across Tanzania.
That whole experience eventually sparked the idea behind Fuga - a home-grown mobile and web application that is quickly becoming one of the country's most promising agricultural innovations.
Hidden costs, hidden losses
Brayan's initial missteps were not unusual. They exposed a far larger issue within the poultry sector in Tanzania: the lack of proper planning and financial literacy among smallholder farmers.
While poultry farming may appear straightforward - buying chicks, raising them, and selling them - the economic nuances are often overlooked.
Feed prices fluctuate. Chick mortality affects margins. Overfeeding drains resources.
And many farmers, especially those just starting, are unaware of how these variables impact their bottom line.
Read the Full Article Here [How a young Tanzanian farmer built promising poultry tech startup]
Pakua Fuga App leo kutimia link hii [Fuga - Apps on Google Play]
Josephine Christopher is a senior business journalist for The Citizen and Mwananchi newspapers
Mwananchi Communications Limited
After a failed poultry venture left him in debt and despair, Brayan Kimaro transformed his hard-earned lessons into Fuga, app and and Fuga calculator to help farmers plan costs, track feed, schedule vaccinations, and record production data
Dar es Salaam. In 2021, in Arusha, a young man named Brayan Kimaro stood on his poultry farm staring at a coop full of half-grown chickens.
The chickens were still short of the right weight for selling, and yet, the feed had run out; worse still, he had no money left.
The numbers, so promising on paper, had crashed in reality. What was originally meant to be a strategic investment in dual-purpose chickens had come to become a personal and financial crisis.
"Emotionally, it was devastating. I felt deep regret and helplessness, thinking, maybe this isn't for me," he recalls. According to Brayan, previously, he calculated that he could earn twice as much by keeping dual-purpose chickens instead of broilers; however, just two months later, feed prices rose, and his finances evaporated.
"So as you can imagine, I had to incur debts so that I could sustain the bird's weight...I took some money from friends to sustain feeding the chicks for the remaining time, and that put me in a bad spot," he said.
He remembers so well that feeling of failure - the humiliation, the helplessness, the fear that he would never make it in poultry farming after all.
And what Bravan did not know then was that this difficult chapter would mark the beginning of something far greater: a digital solution that would change the lives of poultry farmers across Tanzania.
That whole experience eventually sparked the idea behind Fuga - a home-grown mobile and web application that is quickly becoming one of the country's most promising agricultural innovations.
Hidden costs, hidden losses
Brayan's initial missteps were not unusual. They exposed a far larger issue within the poultry sector in Tanzania: the lack of proper planning and financial literacy among smallholder farmers.
While poultry farming may appear straightforward - buying chicks, raising them, and selling them - the economic nuances are often overlooked.
Feed prices fluctuate. Chick mortality affects margins. Overfeeding drains resources.
And many farmers, especially those just starting, are unaware of how these variables impact their bottom line.
Read the Full Article Here [How a young Tanzanian farmer built promising poultry tech startup]
Pakua Fuga App leo kutimia link hii [Fuga - Apps on Google Play]
