Making Money Grow as Trees: Tevis Howard turns his passion from science to fighting poverty in Kenya through a self-started microforestry program
By Patrick Cook-Deegan
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Tevis Howard, founder of KOMAZA, helps Kenyan farmers plant trees as a means for earning a sustainable livelihood. |
Tevis Howard never imagined he would one day operate a tree farm in one of the poorest districts of Kenya. But today the 24-year-old graduate of Brown University runs an up-and-coming organization that uses tree farming as a mechanism to fight chronic poverty.
Only a few years ago, Howard believed he would devote his life to scientific research. “Science was my passion. I believed that I would be doing research my whole life.”
At the age of 17, he was named one of the country’s top-10 teenage high-tech superstars by Forbes ASAP Magazine.
To jumpstart his scientific career, Howard decided to take a year off after graduating high school to investigate malaria at a world-renowned medical research facility in Kilifi, Kenya, a small coastal town of 40,000 people.
After 11 months at the lab, Howard returned to the United States to start his freshman year at Brown. As a freshman and sophomore, he continued to travel to Kilifi to work on malaria research.
But in the summer of 2005, after completing his sophomore year, Howard had a life-changing experience in Kilifi.
During a routine lunch break, Howard sat down to a $10 meal at a creek-side expatriate restaurant. As he sank into his fish and chips, Howard watched as a mother and her three small children waded through the water, carrying heavy loads of firewood on their heads.
Reflecting on the scene, Howard realized that the price of his lunch was “infinitely out of reach” for the Kenyan family slogging through the water. The family would earn less than a dollar that day for the arduous, hours-long journey.
Howard returned to the United States having made his decision to leave the world of science. His new mission was to find the most effective means to fight poverty in Kilifi.
After months of frenzied research, he decided on the idea of tree farming. Kilifi district has a particularly difficult climate for traditional farming. Irregular rainfall and poor soils prevent farmers from producing plentiful yields from traditional crops like beans and maize. Trees are better able to cope with the climate, making tree farming much more lucrative than traditional farming. But tree farming is logistically complicated and requires expensive inputs, which is why many poor Kilfians rely on traditional crops.
In January 2006, Howard returned to Kenya to start an organization that would provide poor farmers with the tools to profit from tree farming—providing farm inputs, giving farm training, helping harvest the trees, finding a place to process the trees, and finally locating a buyer for the timber.
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| Kenya's Kilifi district has a difficult climate for traditional farming, as irregular rainfall and poor soil prevent farmers from producing cash crops like beans and maize; as an alternative, KOMAZA is working with farmers to plant eucalyptus trees, which are growing much faster than indigenous trees. |
A few months later, in April 2006, accompanied by $75,000 that he raised through family and friends, Howard launched KOMAZA (Swahili for “promote development, encourage growth”) by planting a five-acre test farm with 3,000 eucalyptus trees to measure how well they would grow in the region.
To help run KOMAZA, Howard hired three full-time Kenyan employees before returning to the United States for his senior year in the fall of 2007.
Back at Brown, Howard faced a tough balancing act as a full time student and KOMAZA Executive Director. “It was a huge responsibility to build KOMAZA while trying to pass 10 classes,” he says. Howard was constantly on the phone searching for money and frantically sending out e-mails to pay for the salaries of his three Kenyan employees and operations at KOMAZA, giving him a lot of sleepless nights.
After graduating from Brown in May 2007, Howard moved to Kilifi to work at KOMAZA full time. He and his Kenyan staff spoke with farmers in the region about the best model for planting trees. After working through many options, they decided on planting trees with individual families.
According to the current model, each farmer gives a portion of her land to plant trees. With the assistance of KOMAZA, the farmers plant, grow, and harvest their trees during the course of several years.
This model comes with a lot of responsibility. “These farmers are right on the edge of starvation,” says Barrett Hazeltine, a professor emeritus at Brown University who has spent 10 years in Africa working on different engineering and agricultural projects. Hazeltine has been working with Howard as an adviser since KOMAZA’s inception.
Howard also decided to test several other models of planting trees with more than 50 pilot farms in April 2008. The result was 17,000 trees planted with 48 families, four schools, and one women’s group.
Howard sees many other opportunities to leverage tree farming for economic growth. KOMAZA is working to sell tree-farming packages to Kenya’s middle- and upper-class investors. “Many wealthier Kenyans with good jobs in towns and cities have large farms that are completely underutilized. These people are also very eager to put some of their money into a low-risk, high-return investment such as tree farming,” explains Howard.
Howard has plans to work with these investors, using the profits to reinvest in poor, individual farms. Howard also has been tinkering with the idea of using the trees to sell carbon credits.
Howard’s innovative methods are garnering attention in the United States. Earlier this year, Howard was awarded two prestigious fellowships. The first, The Rainer Arnhold program, is a two-year fellowship designed to help social entrepreneurs build organizations that create maximum impact. The other, the Draper Richards Fellowship, is a highly-selective venture-philanthropy group that provides strategic guidance and $100,000 annually for three years to social entrepreneurs launching new, innovative organizations.
In October 2008, Howard aims to plant trees with at least 100 small-scale farmers. In 2009, he is optimistic KOMAZA will work with more than 500 poor families. Howard anticipates problems but believes he will find solutions. “As long as our model stays flexible, we will be able to overcome difficulties.”
Currently, KOMAZA’s greatest hurdle is funding. Howard hopes to raise $100,000 by the end of 2008 to fund KOMAZA’s growth. “If we don’t raise at least another $50,000, we’ll have to seriously cut back,” says Howard.
But in as little as five years, Howard hopes that KOMAZA will not need donations. If everything goes according to plan, KOMAZA will be receiving revenues from its current tree plantings. With a profitable investment model, KOMAZA expects to eventually attract for-profit investments in small-scale family tree farming.
Bringing in private investments will greatly ease, and possibly replace, the need for philanthropic donations. In addition to reducing overheads, a for-profit company can attract a lot more capital, enabling much faster growth to serve more families. “If you create something that is attractive to the private sector, it can be rapidly scaled up,” says Howard.
Howard dreams big. In the future, “I want to help thousands of communities throughout East Africa and beyond,” he says. The next several months will be a big test to see if these dreams will come true.
To learn more about KOMAZA, to make a donation, or to volunteer/intern for KOMAZA visit www.komaza.org.