do u know anything about mwea??know something now .. Whenever one hears of Mwea, a town situated on the Embu-Nairobi Highway in Kirinyaga County and about 98 kilometres from Nairobi, what comes to mind is the rice farming associated with the area. What people do not know, however, is that the town’s original name originated from the word Ngurubani, coined from Kiswahili word Gorofani, which means, inside a storey house. The town came into existence in the early 1960s when rice farmers under the white settlers used to come to collect rice cash from the only storey house, which was their bank in the town. So, they would say, “Let us go to gorofani”, but they pronounced it ngorobaine, hence the name of the town at the time became Ngurubani. The first storey building is still there and it houses Mwea Multipurpose Cooperative Society. History has it that the initial inhabitants of this town were African colonial detainees who later became labourers who were arrested from different places and detained at Kathigiriri. They used to live in shanties in areas of Kamucege and Kiamanyeki. The detainees dug canals, prepared the shambas to plant rice, and were given land in return as tenants. The colonial government researched the once plain, flat land of Mwea in the 1950s and saw it was good for rice farming. It was later gazetted as an irrigation scheme. Today, Mwea is divided into two: Mwea East and Mwea West constituencies. Before, it was Kirinyaga South, which was later divided into Kirinyanga South and North. Mwea East is in Kirinyaga South whereas Mwea West is found in Kirinyaga North. Mwea town is in Kirinyaga South. The 2009 census gave the population of Mwea constituency as 176,261. Since then, the population has grown fast, thanks to the liberalisation of rice farming, which used to be controlled by the colonialists through the National Irrigation Board, a body that still exists. “You would harvest rice and all of it is taken by the white settlers, leaving farmers with a little for consumption,” said John Muriithi, the general manager of Mwea Rice Growers Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd. Rice farming — the main economic activity here — has seen the growth of huge milling companies like Mwea Rice Millers and Nice Rice Millers. There are also small factories that offer employment opportunities. Many people have migrated from different parts of the country to come and cultivate rice or trade in rice. There is also horticultural farming, which goes hand in hand with rice farming. The new county government has started building more staff offices at the former DC’s premises, with Kerugoya town as the county’s headquarters. A number of commercial banks have also pitched tent in Mwea town. Despite it’s business growth, the real estate sector is still underdeveloped. The hotel industry, on the other hand, is growing fast due to traders who come to buy rice from far and sometimes have to spend the night in here.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 08:00:17 +0000
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