Peter Waga

Peter Waga is the Executive Director of Value Farms, a unique public-private partnership meant to synergize and exploit agricultural potential in Siaya and Homabay Counties. Established in 2013 to convince smallholder farmers to amalgamate their land for commercial agriculture, Value Farms is currently directly impacting approximately 4,000 households in Nyanza, representing 250 smallholder farmers who on average each have four beneficiaries to the land.
Raised in Nairobi city and in the lush agricultural region of Kericho County, Peter was perturbed by the widespread poverty in his western Kenya paternal ancestral home, where he spent all his school holidays. Hunger was rampant among communities here despite their proximity to a permanent water resource and access to vast tracts of land. The successful micro-enterprise of his mother’s kitchen garden here made him alive to the enormous agricultural potential of this region.
After nearly twenty years at DHL Express in the corporate sector where he rose from Business Development Manager to Logistics Manager, earning an award for running the best-managed logistics project in sub-Saharan Africa, Peter took the leap into private business and established Express Package Services Limited. Here, during his eight-year tenure here as Managing Director, Peter managed countrywide courier distribution networks for major international and local companies such as Shell, British American Tobacco, NHIF, Kenya Cooperative Creameries, BATA, and Safaricom.
Peter first ventured into agribusiness in 2010 when he set an agricultural land development enterprise and successfully negated a contract with Muhoroni Sugar Company to provide heavy-duty equipment to the company as well as its extensive out-grower scheme. For three years, Peter worked with cotton farmers in Uyoma, near Bondo Town, Siaya County on land development, distribution of cotton seeds and other farm inputs. The firm was also responsible for buying harvested cotton and transporting to ginneries in Makueni County.
His passion for agriculture reignited, in 2013, as Executive Director of Value Farms Ltd., through the local Member of Parliament, Peter mobilized 145 members in Siaya County’s Sare region and negotiated for a 10-year lease for Value Farms Limited to carry out commercial agricultural activities. So far, the firm has recruited staff, mobilized equipment and resources that has resulted in over 260 acres of land amalgamated and put under commercial production. Under the USAID/KFIE Stage II (pilot roll-out) grant which is in the pipeline, Value Farms expects to scale up the project to 1,000 acres, by developing a robust out-grower scheme in Siaya County where the 250,000 members of the community are net importers of food.