Kenya waste-to-value company enlisting farmers to earn from black soldier flies

By George Munene

Eco­dudu, a waste-to-value com­pany housed at the Chandaria Busi­ness In­nov­a­tion In­cub­a­tion centre, is seek­ing to re­cruit small to me­dium scale farm­ers look­ing to gen­er­ate extra rev­enue by rear­ing the in­sects on their site with the com­pany’s sup­port.

Black Sol­dier Flies (BSF) are a cheap al­tern­at­ive source of pro­tein for pigs, poultry and fish. They offer equal value to more ex­pens­ive pro­tein sources such as omena, fish­meal and soy­beans thus are use­ful for farm­ers look­ing to lower their pro­duc­tion costs.

Birthed in 2017, the Com­pany’s co-founder Starlin Farah, ex­plains that a farmer needs to demon­strate a ca­pa­city to feed the flies on sources of or­ganic waste avail­able to them on their farm or house­hold level. Though a green­house works best in rear­ing the fly, a basic farm shed could also be re­pur­posed to house and grow BSF.

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While the black sol­dier fly takes 31 days to ma­ture, Eco­dudu sells farm­ers young lar­vae to rear from the fifth to nine­teenth day—the time they are young lar­vae until about their pre­pupa stage. The in­sects are vo­ci­fer­ous eat­ers and gain up to ten times their weight after just 14 days. The firm buys back ma­ture flies from farm­ers at Sh50-90 per kilo­gram. They are dried and pack­aged as Dudu Meal feed which has a 45% crude pro­tein con­tent and 36% of fats.   

Black sol­dier flies are neither pests nor vec­tors; like red­worms, they are use­ful in de­com­pos­ing or­ganic sub­strates, com­post­ing house­hold and ag­ri­cul­tural waste products. Eco­dudu sells this for­ti­fied bio-fer­til­iser.

Eco­dudu seeks to har­ness in­sects as re­cyc­ling agents in use to ad­dress global is­sues such as waste man­age­ment, grow­ing pro­tein de­mand and en­vir­on­mental con­ser­va­tion. The com­pany is part of the FoodTech Africa Ac­cel­er­ator Pro­gram 2020 and its founders are fi­nal­ists for this year’s under 30 ag­ri­pren­uer of the year award.

Farmer Re­gis­tra­tion: https://​ecodudu.​com/​farmers-registration/​

Eco­dudu: +254 725-888-071/ +254 721-237-009