In case you’re new to this column, when I’m not nitpicking about corporate governance, I wail and gnash my teeth over my sheep farm. As I have written here many times before: if you are thinking about getting into farming while still holding down a white‑collar job in Nairobi, don’t dare.
Here are a few recent events that should strongly encourage your discouragement.
In 2023, I sank a borehole at the sheep farm located in Laikipia East, a water‑distressed area on the leeward side of the great Mt Kenya. My water engineer, a superb gentleman of the highest integrity, obtained all the licences required for the job.
Somewhere along the way, as we concluded the project, he must have informed me that the next step was to obtain a water usage permit from the Water Resources Authority (WRA). Of course, I didn’t get round to it. I had already paid for all the drilling licences, blah blah, and had reached regulatory overload. But the regulatory gods were not done with me.
By mid‑2025, I received a text message from a number identifying itself as WRA. Said number claimed I had a bill of several thousand shillings and needed to pay via e‑Citizen.
Folks, don’t think that if you do the Lord’s work of drilling a hole to meet your own water needs, our good government won’t come after you. Turns out that while you may own the land on which your confoundedly expensive borehole pump sits, the government owns every blessed drop of water beneath it.
Having picked myself off the dusty floor in righteous indignation, I paid the bill shingo upande. Water is a shared resource, after all, and give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, blah blah.
Then the bills started coming monthly. I began to doubt the veracity of the amounts, particularly since there were no meter readings, yet the text messages assumed a certain level of usage. I decided to visit the WRA offices in Nanyuki town.
The team welcomed me quite warmly, much to my sceptical surprise. A lovely lady walked me through my purported historical injustices, shared my statement, and schooled me on why I was being charged so much. Indignation slowly turned into enlightenment, tinged with a tiny bit of shame, as my lack‑of‑permit chickens had come home to roost.
When you apply to drill a borehole, you submit estimates of your domestic and agricultural usage, along with your mobile number. If you don’t apply for the permit after drilling, WRA will assume your monthly usage and charge you Sh10 per cubic metre, whether or not you are drawing water! With a permit, however, the charge is Sh2.50 for domestic use and Sh2.00 for irrigation. Any guess what I am currently applying for with a quickness? Let us set my water woes aside.
A few days after returning from Nanyuki, my farm manager called. Watu wa County had arrived. They wanted two things: first, a licence for my sheep, and secondly, a construction permit for the ramshackle kitchen I am cobbling together for my workers. Just know that I am about 35 kilometres from the Nanyuki County offices in the deepest interior of Laikipia East, where the last county officials to visit were probably escorting John Speke and Richard Burton as they hunted for the source of the Nile.
“What do you mean you need a licence to rear sheep?” was my exasperated query to the farm manager. A word of advice to all telephone farmers: never speak to village or county officials yourself. Hide behind your farm workers. It will then become a “ground‑to‑ground” discussion rather than a “Rural Ground to Nairobi Ozone” reverse power play. So he spoke to them and explained that my sheep were for personal consumption. “No, that cannot be,” they responded. “These sheep have very nice housing.”
The farm manager cast a baleful eye at what they regarded as a Muthaiga‑level mansion for sheep and shrugged. County officials concluded they’d find my sheep at the cess point on the Nyeri‑Nanyuki highway the day I decided to sell them.
Crisis resolved. For now. As for the ramshackle kitchen, they extracted their pound of flesh and kept on Johnny Walking.
If you want to undertake any activities in your rural backwater farm, let me actively encourage you not to think about it. But if you still want to pursue what can only be labelled as a fool’s errand, then find out what the 1000+ rules are for running a rural backwater farm.
Why? Because the county informer network is as long as it is wide. And know this: the long arm of regulatory enforcement knows no earthen road nor water‑distressed bounds.
Carol Musyoka is a former banker and is currently a corporate governance specialist.
