From seedlings to paycheques: How Kenya’s tree-growing drive is creating jobs for youth

Behind every million seedlings stands a chain of young Kenyans turning conservation into commerce

By Faith Ogutu

Kenya’s national tree-growing campaign is quietly becoming something more than an environmental initiative — for a growing number of young people across the country, it is becoming their first source of income.

As Kenya marked Mazingira Week with a target of 17.24 million trees, including the distribution of 5.3 million fruit-tree seedlings, the campaign raised a sharper question: can the drive to green the country also create lasting jobs for a generation struggling to find them? The evidence emerging from nurseries, forests and farming plots across Kenya suggests the answer is yes — but only for those who treat the opportunity as a business rather than a seasonal exercise.

Money enters the picture long before a tree reaches maturity. Income is generated at every stage: collecting seed, raising seedlings, filling nursery bags, grafting, watering, controlling pests, keeping records, packaging, transporting and selling. After planting, further work opens in landscaping, maintenance, ecological restoration and monitoring. For many young Kenyans, the national campaign is no longer just a planting season. It is becoming an enterprise.

In West Pokot, the 30-member Mukoe Group is already testing that possibility. Formed in August 2025 and initially focused on potato farming, the group changed direction after member Phoebe Cheptoo returned from nursery training by the Centre for African Bio-Entrepreneurship. Today the group tends between 8,000 and 10,000 seedlings — mango, avocado and yellow passion fruit — with an avocado seedling fetching around KSh150. “We are conserving the environment and also making profits from it,” said group member Gideon Mungole. The group is now seeking larger orders from county governments, schools and institutions involved in tree-growing programmes, recognising that scale is what will transform a promising start into a sustainable livelihood.

For Cheptoo, the nursery model offers young people a practical alternative to the paralysis of waiting for formal employment. “To the young people and the youths in agripreneurship, this is the way to go. This should be the first employment. It is automatic rather than searching for white-collar jobs,” she said.

In Nyeri, 19-year-old Berrick Ayando saw a similar opening after learning that his community was restoring the degraded Nyeri Hill Forest. He established a nursery, and his first batch of 12,000 seedlings was purchased by the community at KSh10 each through support from Rural Outreach for Development in Kenya, generating approximately KSh120,000. He now has another 20,000 seedlings ready for sale and plans to continue the venture after completing secondary school. His story illustrates how a restoration project can create a viable market for a young entrepreneur years before any tree produces timber or fruit.

A tree nursery carries one decisive commercial advantage: income can start early. Young entrepreneurs do not have to wait for trees to mature. Revenue begins flowing from the sale of quality seedlings, and producing those seedlings requires skilled labour — creating demand for people who can propagate plants, prepare nursery beds, graft fruit trees, manage stock, control pests, keep records, market products and arrange transport.

In Murang’a, Joyce Kinyua trained as an accountant but turned to agriculture after struggling to find formal work. Her nursery has handled approximately 200,000 assorted seedlings, including grafted avocado, mango, orange, pawpaw, macadamia and apple. She employs five young people for planting, watering, weeding and grafting. During the rainy season she has sold plants worth KSh8,000 from her town display and another KSh20,000 from her farm on a good day, with seedlings priced between KSh100 and KSh150. Yet her experience also reflects the limits of the model. Fertiliser, nursery bags and other inputs erode returns, while water and labour remain constant costs that do not pause between seasons.

In Narok, Nampaso Daniel started her nursery in 2019 and by 2023 employed six young people — two security guards, two waterers, one operations worker and one salesperson. Another operator, Annlynne Sanaipei, has reported selling more than 500 seedlings a day in the rainy season, generating more than KSh10,000 in profit on peak days, though demand drops sharply during dry months.

The government has taken notice. Forestry Principal Secretary Gitonga Mugambi has urged young Kenyans to treat tree nurseries as businesses rather than purely environmental projects. Speaking in Eldoret during the disbursement of the second tranche of NYOTA business capital, Mugambi described nursery enterprises as both profitable and conservation-minded, pointing to rising demand for high-value fruit seedlings — particularly avocado and coffee — as a market with both local and international reach. The State Department for Forestry is expanding nursery infrastructure and seedling production to support the 15-billion-tree programme, with a stated goal of raising national tree cover to 30 per cent by 2032.

The opportunity extends well beyond the nursery gate. In towns and cities, young people are moving into landscaping, tree maintenance and urban greening. In Lamu, the Back to Eden self-help group of 37 women turned to grafted cashew seedling production, raising 39,600 seedlings. After training and improved market access, members’ reported monthly income rose from KSh1,000 to KSh5,000. Peter Minang, Africa Director at the Landscape Alliance, argues the horizon is wider still, pointing to potential industries in timber, food, energy, biomaterials, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics that could emerge from Africa’s forest and agroforestry resources if raw commodity exports are replaced by value addition.

In Elgeyo Marakwet, Hillary Kiplagat Kibiwott — who grew up around the Kessup Forest in a family that depended on charcoal — began tree growing in 2016 after concluding that the family’s practice was unsustainable. On 22 and 23 April this year, he planted 23,326 trees in 24 hours at Kessup Forest, surpassing the previous Guinness World Record of 23,060. “I would like to say I am a tree planter, but mainly I do tree growing, because every tree you plant, you wish that it grows to serve its purpose,” Kibiwott said.

Kenya’s 15-billion-tree programme is vast in ambition. Its true success, however, will not be measured only in seedlings planted or hectares restored. It will be measured in whether the young people producing those seedlings can build businesses that outlast the planting campaigns — and in whether a nursery bag filled with soil today becomes, in time, a paycheck, an enterprise and a livelihood.

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