The former altar boy and the ‘farming girl’ building Green Eden

Relatives who tried to stop Ritkatmun Bwemana from becoming a farmer now send her photographs of their farms, asking for advice. She remembers when they thought she needed some.

Her grades were good enough to pursue a career in medicine. Why waste them on agriculture? Some called her father, hoping he could intervene. But Bwemana had wanted to farm since she was 11. Her parents backed her.

I meet her and Theophilus Maimako, her Green Eden co-founder, in the lobby of the Somerset Westview Hotel in Nairobi on July 26. It is 9 am, after breakfast. We have 30 minutes before I drive them to Hello Tractor, the agricultural technology company that connects farmers with tractor services, for a conversation with its founders.

A mutual friend introduced them. Maimako remembers the recommendation: a first-class graduate, an agronomist, an asset. She supplies the technical grounding; he has a gift for making connections. They have a history together and agree on much. Then we get to God.

Maimako grew up an altar boy, as I did. For a moment, we have something in common besides the conversation that brought us here. People thought he would become a priest.

Now he avoids funerals because he cannot bear hearing mourners told that their loss was God’s will. He believes people let God take responsibility for too much.

The old altar boy returns when you ask him about seeds. Between her stubborn childhood ambition and his unfinished conversation with faith, there is more to discuss than just farming.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You work with seeds, but every seed is really a bet on the future. What are you betting your own life on?

Bwemana: I’m betting my life on the fact that Green Eden is going to work. Because it will work, food integrity will no longer be an issue. Not just food insecurity, but food nutrition security. We’re going to produce food that meets both quantity and quality standards. We’re going to have healthy food and sufficient food.

Maimako: I’m betting my life on change in the lives of rural smallholder farmers. There is a basic minimum that people should have. That’s where the social impact of Green Eden comes in. For me, it’s not just about technology. The point is to create change in people’s lives.

Was there ever a moment when you almost chose the laboratory over entrepreneurship?

Maimako: Yes, because I was tired and frustrated. There was a time our greenhouses kept collapsing. My parents had to come, calm me down, and give me money to fix them. There are moments when you want to choose something else out of frustration. But if you don’t do it, you will be more frustrated than you were when you wanted to stop.

Bwemana: Those moments are rare for me because, since I was 11, my primary goal has been to be a farmer. Through secondary school, everybody knew me as the farming girl. At university, I studied crop production and agriculture. I graduated with a first-class because of how seriously I took this goal.

As much as frustration sets in, I have wired my mind to understand that it’s part of the journey. There are ups and downs, and I’m here for it all. The hurdles we overcome today will help us with those coming later.

If I visited the village where you grew up, what would people say you were most likely to become?

Bwemana: A farmer.

Maimako: A professor and a priest.

Why a Catholic priest?

Maimako: I spent much of my time growing up with priests. I was an altar boy. I find supernatural things more appealing than physical ones, which is why I love seeds. Jesus said, “Unless a seed falls down to the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain. But if it dies, it yields a great harvest.” That’s the connection with farming. That one seed that has to die produces a lot. That one seed performs miracles.

Africa often talks about food security. Should we be talking about food sovereignty instead?

Bwemana: We should be talking about both because one cannot exist outside the other. What’s the point of having all the food if nobody can access it? As long as there is food, it should remain accessible to every human being.

How did you meet?

Maimako: We heard about this first-class graduate, an agronomist who knew what she was talking about. The person who recommended her said she was an asset. She’s been wonderful. She brings up ideas and keeps everything moving.

Everybody has a strength; two people cannot be the same. I’m more outgoing, meeting people and pursuing deals. My strength is human connection. She is good at what she does, and I recognise that. Everybody brings something different. She keeps the work moving while I am out meeting people. Those strengths have to work together.

What’s one belief you’ve held for years that almost everyone around you disagrees with?

Maimako: That God is not responsible for everything that happens. God does not allow everything to happen. We should learn to take responsibility and be accountable.

I don’t like going to places where people are grieving. Someone has been unable to have a child for five years, finally gets pregnant, and then the child dies. Because you don’t know what to say, you tell them it is the will of God instead of being quiet. It has become a religious language. What kind of God would do something like that?

Jeremiah 29 says, “I know the plans I have for you. They are plans of good and not of evil, to give you a good future and a hope.” Does that look like a God who allows these things to happen? So I stay away from funerals. People want to respond to the pain in that moment by saying it is God’s will. I struggle with that explanation. We should learn that sometimes we do not know what to say.

Bwemana: My mind goes back to 2016. I had finished high school and was going to university. I’d always said I would be a farmer. I had no business with medicine or engineering. Although I had grades that could get me anywhere, I said no.

Many people around me, family and friends, said it was a waste for a woman to want to be a farmer. Relatives called my dad and said he could find me a place in medicine, even if I didn’t have the grades. The pressure not to do what I wanted was enormous.

Thank God for my parents. They said it was what I’d always wanted, and I should do it. My mother, who works in health, told them I wouldn’t succeed in that field because I’m too empathetic.

I did it, I’m still doing it, and many of them have converted. Everybody calls me now, sending pictures of their farms. I’m like, “Oh, but you didn’t want me to go down this path.”

Founders become good at convincing everyone else. Who can still tell you you’re wrong, and you’ll listen?

Maimako: My father. I also listen to other people because we always run checks. I need to know how things look. We have advisers in agriculture and technology because our work involves both technology and the field and greenhouse.

Bwemana: Him and my mentors. I have an academic mentor, a career mentor, and spiritual mentors whom I listen to.

If you could spend an evening with one African scientist, entrepreneur, or political leader, living or dead, who would you choose?

Maimako: Thomas Sankara. I would ask about his vision and strategies for Africa, and how he intended to achieve them. He was a visionary ready to give his life for his country.

Bwemana: A scientist from Eritrea, Russom. He’s in a field I want to go into: plant breeding and genetics. I’m not pleased with what’s happening in the seed world, where people want a monopoly on seed.

That defeats the goal of food security and sovereignty because you must keep going back to those people for seeds. He has worked with seeds for over 20 years and produced his own, so you don’t have to keep going back. I’ve not really met someone with that much hands-on experience.

Who’s taught you more about leadership: an investor, a professor, or a farmer?

Maimako: A farmer. We have meetings and group discussions with farmers, and their loyalty to their leader made me question things. Why are hundreds of farmers loyal to this one person? What does he have?

If you work with farmers, you know they aren’t easy to convince. You tell them, “Don’t do it this way; do it this way instead,” and they don’t believe you. But once that leader says, “This is the new thing; we should do it this way,” they all listen.

I wanted to understand why. It boiled down to one thing: as much as he was their leader, he was their servant first. That unlocked the followership.

Bwemana: My father. He says little but commands more. People ask me how he does it. Is it loyalty? His good name? You go somewhere, and people ask, “Are you this person’s child?” Then they want to do something for you.

I had to pay close attention to how he operates. I’m trying to avoid that saying about a prophet not being respected in his hometown. I know I have a gem in the house. There is something to learn there, and I have to calm down and pay attention to it.

What’s the most unpopular decision you’ve made as a founder?

Maimako: Not spelling things out. Not documenting agreements. It can put you in a very deep mess when you don’t have documents to back them up.

Bwemana: Something close to that: documentation, especially when dealing with people and giving them certain levels of power in the company.

What do people only understand about farming once they’ve lived it?

Maimako: Farming is a system of its own. People think there’s nothing deep about it, but as an agronomist and a farmer, you know otherwise. We don’t wake up and decide to apply fertiliser or a chemical because we feel like it. You have to study things in minute detail. As little as one leaf curling is a message.

The roots aren’t visible. It’s the same with life: what happens behind the scenes produces the fruit you see. Farming is an integrated system that requires your full attention. People think you get a hoe or tractor, sow, and harvest a few months later. It’s deeper than that.

I’ve spent years studying what works for a particular crop, understanding the quantity of inputs it needs at each stage, with enough precision to predict the outcome.

Bwemana: Time matters. Every decision counts because we’re dealing with living things. You don’t have the luxury of taking your time to make a decision. One day matters. A few hours matter.

People think it’s like any other business until they get in and, between today and tomorrow, all their plants die. Time management is something people often learn the hard way in farming. That’s why planning matters: knowing what to do before you reach that point.

Maimako monitoring a farm from their offices in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. Image source: Green Eden

Has building Green Eden changed how you think about time and patience?

Bwemana: You have to be patient and know how to plan. Sometimes you want things in your own time, but you can’t have them because you’re dealing with other people. You have to consider their views, even if you think yours is superior. Learning to work with people has been a major part of building the company.

Maimako: In the agricultural food system, one size doesn’t fit all. It’s a learning process. You learn, unlearn, and relearn. Then you translate those lessons into a better solution for the people who will use it, addressing what they actually need, not just what you think they need. That requires patience, especially when dealing with farmers. You have to go back to what you have learned and work out how to apply it. The solution must become better for the people who need it. That is a whole learning course in itself.

If you had to leave Green Eden tomorrow, what unfinished problem would bother you most?

Bwemana: I find life in what we’re building. Perhaps you bring people onto the board or into the company who have more vision than you, and you take a back seat. But I don’t see an end to this anytime soon. In one way or another, there must be movement. The interest is there.

Maimako: I can’t even picture leaving enough to imagine the problem that would remain.

When did you last change your mind because someone much younger challenged your thinking?

Maimako: Weeks ago.

Bwemana: Two weeks ago. It’s a constant thing. It happens all the time.

If your phone disappeared and you couldn’t recover your contacts, whose number would you know by heart?

Maimako: My parents, my wife, and my brother.

Bwemana: My husband.

What’s one word about Africa you wish would disappear from investor presentations?

Maimako: “Development.” When people say “developing countries” in the context of innovation, it already puts your innovation below that of Western countries. A solution has one class. As long as it meets the need, it’s a solution.

When you say, “This guy is from a developing country, and he has a solution,” that statement has already done a lot. Someone from the US will proudly say where they’re from and what they’re doing. Sometimes, look at the solution.

I don’t think we have more problems than they do, or that their solutions are superior. Remove that language and bring us to a level where you can compare innovations using data.

Bwemana: “Resource constraint.” The notion is always that these people cannot afford something. It forgets that we’re in a country with potential, producing resources for people.

When you hear “smallholder farmer,” people picture a man with less than a hectare and his whole family. But in the field, some of these farmers have it better than you do.

“Resource constraint” isn’t always the right description. Resources are there. Sometimes the issue is convincing people to put their resources into this thing. You have to be on the field to see that. The picture people paint of smallholder farmers does not always match the people you meet. That is why I question how we describe their available resources.

Imagine writing to your grandchildren fifty years from now. What would you want them to understand about the Africa you were trying to build, and what you refused to compromise on?

Bwemana: I’d start by telling them how blessed Africa is. I wouldn’t need to stress it because they’d be seeing it. By then, our impact would be visible. Green Eden would be a global name.

I’d want to inspire them and let them know that, however tough or dark a situation may be, it’s possible to do big things from a small place.

Maimako: I would tell them that Africa is blessed and that they should have some control over its resources. Don’t sell equity in Africa for a promised land elsewhere. This is the only home you have, the only home you can make. Appreciate what is here and make it work. I am more Pan-African in my thinking. When I look at our food and mineral resources, I think we need to look inward and appreciate what we have. I believe the world needs us. We should have that confidence in what belongs to us.

Whatever challenges you face, it can work. If people took years to disrupt a system, they started somewhere. You also have the chance to correct a mistake or implement a better system. Even if you can’t solve everything, take it one step at a time. Your decision today not to compromise is the beginning of something good.

Look at the mustard seed. It’s tiny, but it commits to going into the ground and, with the right conditions, grows into a great tree. That little decision, that commitment you want to make: start it. You might be the only one. You have to put in the time and keep building. There will always be people who want change.

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