Mwenda@MwendaKev
Unfortunately, this headline is misleading. Ruto has had several successes in leadership, and the dairy sector in Meru is one good example. And no. This is not a paid post. This is an honest view from a dairy farmer in Meru.
I believe that when President Ruto first looked at the great mountain and the rolling hills of Meru, he first saw a loyal voting bloc. Of importance to this post, though, is that he also saw a sleeping giant. He saw a local milk factory that, with the right spark, could become the dairy capital of a continent.
In June 2023, Meru was already performing well, but the sector was ceiling-bound, producing 128 million litres a year while farmers buckled under the weight of expensive feed and erratic artificial insemination services. He offered a speech, but he also struck a pact with a Meru Dairy Union leadership that was ready to listen.
The opening move in 2023 was about math. "You cannot produce wealth," he told them, "if the cow eats your entire profit." He backed the words with action, zero-rating duty on feed raw materials and slashing the price of sexed semen. It was a strategic play to ensure that every birth in a Meru shed resulted in a high-yielding heifer rather than a bull for the butcher. His mandate was simple: "I will lower your costs; you increase your volume."
By the time he returned in 2024, the blueprint had turned into bedrock. In Mitunguu, South Imenti, he commissioned a KSh 200 million animal feed factory with a goal to break the stranglehold of expensive imports. He shifted the goalposts: "Produce the milk," he urged. "Don't worry about where it goes. I will get you the market."
By June 2025, that promise had been fulfilled. The Union had evolved into a corporate titan, with production surging toward 640,000 litres a day. Cartons of Mount Kenya Milk began crossing into the DRC and South Sudan, proof that he had indeed opened the doors.
Today, in 2026, Ruto’s story in Meru is one of the validated convictions. He bet on a leadership that could execute, and they delivered a miracle. When he speaks to the rest of the nation now, he points to the huge mountain of Imenti and the hills of Tigania and Igembe as the blueprint for the future. He tells them that the modern Meru farmer is no longer a victim of an ignored past. They are the sovereign owners of a multibillion-shilling industry where the cow is the currency, the Union is the bank, and the limit has finally been removed.
By January 2026, the Meru Central Dairy Cooperative Union officially became Kenya's largest dairy processor, commanding a 31% share of the national formal market. When the Union’s turnover (KSh 24B) is nearly double the entire County Government’s budget (KSh 14.6B), you are looking at a new economic heartbeat of the mountain. To me, that is leadership.
