Kajiado Woman Representative Leah Sankaire has initiated a process to digitize marketing of Maasai bead products.
She said the digital marketing space will link the products to world and stop exploitation of the traders by middlemen.
Sankare said she is working with other stakeholders to set up a website to sell and market.
“Our women traders will be able to access the marketplace through a website. They will post pictures of their products that will be accessed by buyers worldwide,” she said.
“Once the products have been sold, we will arrange to ship them directly.”
The money will then be wired directly to the traders’ personal accounts.
She said she started the initiative last year to help the community get an alternative source of income after drought killed most of their products.
The severe drought threatened the Maasai community’s subsistence livelihood.
Conservancies established to meet the needs of the growing tourism industry have also limited grazing areas.
“The situation was dire. I had to sit with the women to see how we could counter the drought. During our conversations, we found that most of these women are skilled in bead work,” said Sankaire.
The MP partnered with the Ushanga Kenya Initiative, a programme in the Ministry of Gender, to facilitate the training of women in different areas.
Ushanga Kenya is an initiative that was established in 2017.
“This is a road map of the entire country where beading is done, we have done two constituencies and the third one is in the pipeline,” she said.
“This initiative aims to create jobs and transform the living standards for pastoralist women through the commercialization of beadwork, which has otherwise been a traditional activity with little economic benefit to the communities.”
It seeks to strengthen business and production capacity of women and youth.
Additionally, it aims to improve competitiveness of bead products in the local regional and international markets for sustainable livelihoods.
Formation of cooperatives will help the women make the products more efficiently and protect their intellectual property.
” Ushanga model is anchored on mobilizing women into organized cooperative groups, providing infrastructure for production and facilitating competitive access to local, regional and international markets through new designs, beading techniques, product finishing, and marketing,” Sankaire said.
“The bottom-up economic model aims to empower indigenous pastoralist women to get the right skills to improve their competitiveness and inject start-up capital into the economy.”
