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Anastacia Wangare Gitau

Anastacia Wangare Gitau is a 41 year old small-holder farmer who lives in Kenya, 50 miles north of Nairobi. In 2000 her husband died and she was left with two young children, a small plot of land and few other resources. Her father-in-law, also a farmer, had few options to help her. But he had seen a KickStart team demonstrate a Super MoneyMaker pump and he offered to help her buy one. She eagerly accepted the offer, and soon started irrigating her plot to grow kale and spinach throughout the year.

She quickly discovered she could easily earn enough to properly feed and educate her children. Customers came to buy directly from her farm and she earned a minimum of $55 profit every week. After three years she had saved enough to buy some dairy cows and to install electricity in her house. She also decided to buy an expensive motorized pump so she could irrigate an even larger area. But she kept her MoneyMaker to supplement the petrol pump and to use when she can’t get fuel or when the petrol pump needs repair.

She next started to grow tomatoes that she sells to a middleman for a large profit. And she bought more dairy cows, and some chickens, so she also makes good money from selling milk and eggs. Anastacia says her biggest investment has been on school fees, and she proudly tells us that today her daughter is at university in Denmark and her son is attending a top private school outside of Nairobi. And she is paying for all their fees with the earnings from her farm.

Meanwhile, she has become an informal ambassador for MoneyMaker pumps. Ten of her neighbors have bought pumps after seeing how her pump kick-started her family’s climb out of poverty.