Maasai-owned market and slaughterhouse

The Keekenyoike Market and Slaughterhouse is a community-owned business established by a group of 16 Maasai in 1981 in Kajiado County in southeast Kenya. The slaughterhouse is an example of innovation and learning in community-managed livestock enterprises. It was designed to function as a social enterprise with strong social social-insurance mechanisms for the local community. This initiative has allowed pastoralists to reap more benefits from the livestock value chain while delivering to urban market high-quality meat produced in a sustainable way. It set up a fair trade meat-marketing chain starting from pastoralist producers to the Keekonyokie community’s own abattoir up to the retail outlets and supermarkets in Nairobi. This case study of development support to institutional innovation by pastoralist men was made during the Learning Route on Innovative Livestock Marketing in northern and eastern Africa in early 2012. It describes the different actors and their roles in this innovation system, the market drivers, the policy environment, the lessons learnt about facilitating innovation in pastoralist livestock marketing and the challenges still faced.

Posted on 17 November 2012 in Pastoralism & Marketing, Pastoralism & Services, Pastoralist Livelihoods & Nutrition