Kenyan camel milk cashing in with ATMs
WAJIR, Kenya — Halima Sheikh Ali is the proud owner of one of the few ATMs in Wajir town in northeast Kenya. But rather than doling out shilling notes, it dispenses something tastier: a fresh pint of camel milk.
“For 100 Kenyan shillings ($1), you get one liter of the freshest milk in Wajir County,” she said, opening a vending machine to check the liquid’s temperature.
One of the world’s biggest camel producers, East Africa also produces much of the world’s camel milk, almost all of it consumed domestically.
In the northeast Kenyan county of Wajir, demand is booming among local people, who say it is healthier and more nutritious than cow milk.
“Camel milk is everything,” said Noor Abdullahi, a project officer for US-based aid agency Mercy Corps. “It is good for diabetes, blood pressure and indigestion.”
But temperatures averaging 40 C in the dry season, combined with the risk of dirty collection containers, mean the liquid can go sour in a matter of hours, he added, making it much harder to sell.
To remedy this, an initiative is equipping about 50 women in Hadado, a village 80 kilometers from Wajir, with refrigerators to cool the milk that remote camel herders send them via tuk-tuk taxi, plus a van to transport it daily to Wajir.
There are a dozen women milk traders, including Sheikh Ali, who sell it through four ATM-like vending machines, after receiving training in business skills such as accounting.
The project is part of a program of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters, or BRACED, which is funded by the UK Department for International Development and led by Mercy Corps.
Fresh and lucrative
Asha Abdi, a milk trader in Hadado who operates one of the refrigerators with 11 other women, said she used to have to boil camel’s milk — using costly and smoky firewood — to prevent it turning sour.
“I spent 100 shillings ($1) a day on firewood, and the milk would often go bad by the time it got to Wajir as the (public) transport took over three hours,” she said.
Now Abdi and the other women in her group send about 500 liters of fresh milk to Wajir every day — a trip that takes just over an hour by van. They then reinvest the profits in other ventures.
“With the milk money I bought 20 goats,” said Abdi.
“But my dream would be to export the camel milk to the United States. I hear it’s like gold over there.”