Have Your Way

Enjoy...

Healthy Woman Magazine

Got a random opportunity to do a cover photo shoot for a new magazine in the Kenyan market, called Healthy Woman. The magazine, I must say, is pretty good; I'm pretty impressed with its content and delivery - I think they've bagged a reader in me

This I'd like to watch...

The First Grader





Nairobi Half Life

Lovely Day

Been reminiscing today and stumbled on this oldie but goodie.

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Good Music :-)

A couple great tracks by some talented women
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Fenamenal Woman - Fena






Heart and Soul - Diana Nduba

Fish Leather?

Came across the article below in the Business Daily and thought it quite interesting!

Joseph Kimatu arranges products made from fish skin at KIRDI headquarters in Nairobi. The items, which include shoes, handbags and belts, are mainly for export. Photo/Tom Otieno 

By FRANKLINE SUNDAY 

Posted  Monday, June 4  2012 at  18:44

In a modest studio in Kisumu, 26-year-old Everline Odera is busy putting the final touches on a unique leather handbags she has been sewing for the last two days.

The pouch is not only unique in design but also in the material used to make it. For the last few months, Ms Odera has been training on how to turn fish leather into clothes and gifts items.

She is a member of Afrika Pamoja, a project by a community-based organisation called the Teenage Mothers and Girls Association of Kenya, (Temak).

“I have been trained as a seamstress and was used to working with fabric but when I heard of the training opportunity at Temak I decided to take it up,” she says.

The use of fish leather is becoming popular especially in the lakeside city of Kisumu where various government agencies and CBOs are working together to create value out of the resource until recently considered as waste.

“In the past, fish skin used to be thrown away and tonnes of it could be found discarded outside fish markets or as factory waste from fillet processing plants,” said Philomena Mashaka, the director of Africa Pamoja.

Most of the people living on the shores of the lake were unaware of the potential that lay rotting in the discarded heaps of fish skin close by.

This was until the Kenya Research Development Institute, KIRDI, came into the picture. KIRDI has for the last three years been running tests with help from the Danish International Development Authority (Danida) to examine the commercial viability of fish leather in the country.

Today the economic experiment by KIRDI shows that lakeside communities that suffer a high unemployment and poverty rates have been sitting on a goldmine and Philomena Mashaka is planning to reverse this trend and rouse her community into action.

“Fish leather has a lot of potential for income and there is something for everyone along the value chain,” she says.

“Communities that live next to the factories are contracted to collect the fish skin and sell it to the KIRDI headquarters in Kisumu for about five shilling per piece”, says Ms Mashaka.“Fish processing factories that produce fillet for export normally discard the skin, bones and entrails.”

“This is a new income stream for the communities who had until now only been depending on fish sales to make money.”

Once at KIRDI’s headquarters in Kisumu, the fish skin is taken through the first stage of processing to remove the flesh and excess oils before being soaked in a concentrated saline solution.

It is then shipped to Nairobi for finer processing and application of dyes to improve its aesthetic properties.

The skins are shipped back to Kisumu where organisations like TEMAK buy them from the KIRDI headquarters at Sh250 per piece.

The leather products made by Ms Odera and her colleagues are sold to local retail outlets and also exported to the international market.“Each piece can make a leather pouch and an average -sized male wallet but it also depends on how much leather is used,” says Ms Odera.

From handbags to wallets to document cases the multi-coloured leather products sport unique fish-scale patterns while maintaining the soft texture of leather.

One leather wallet goes for about Sh500 in the local market or about $12 when exported and the profit margin for the craftsmen and women per piece is about 30 per cent after all the expenses have been paid.

A shoe is a bit on the higher side and goes for Sh6,000. These are made on order. Pouches and wallets go for between Sh600 and 1,500 depending on the size.

Data from the Kenya Leather Development Council indicates that the tonnage of semi-processed hides and skins exports increased by a record 600 per cent to hit 2,250 tonnes last year up from 322 tonnes the previous year.

At the same time, the price of a tonne of leather is said to have increased from Sh35,000 to Sh47,000.

Resource injection

This has spurred the government to inject more resources into the leather industry with a promise of six new tanneries in the country over the next few years.

The 2012 Economic Survey indicates that the quantity of fish landed in the last year increased by 5.9 per cent to stand at 149.0 thousand tonnes. Most of the by-products of this catch is usually discarded.But the commercial potential of fish leather has yet to be fully exploited despite its inherent ability to create industries and employment opportunities.

Ms Mashaka and her colleagues at TEMAK hope to use the success of their current programme as a case study and scale up production to create more job opportunities in the region.

Source: Business Daily