How lack of internship helped Manyatta MP Gitonga Mukunji start his own company while in university

Gitonga Mukunji, the newly minted 35-year-old Manyatta Member of Parliament is a polished communicator and sharp dresser who managed to outclass seasoned politicians to clinch the seat at his second asking.

But the smart and savvy politician we see today is thousands of miles away from the wildest dreams he harbored growing up in a quiet village in Rugumu, Embu County.

He did not have much growing up, his father was a school bus driver and the family were not well off financially so he buried himself in books and he excelled academically.

But the lack of local success stories made a young Mukunji wonder if education would really help him and his family escape poverty and be a man of means.

"My family was not able financially, my father was a school bus driver at St. Ursula (primary school) and from my village, there was nobody I could look up to who had experienced much success that I admired. So I studied hard," he says.

Mukunji remembers how even those who had excelled in their studies had not had any success after school and this also put doubts in his head on whether the education he loved so much would help get him and his family out of poverty.

He performed very well in his KCSE exams that he was among the top students in the country and his name was even in the newspapers.

The father of two, who attended Nguviu Boys High School, one of the best institutions in the country says his doubts about his future and the role education would play in it went away after his stellar performance in Form 4.

"I had the realisation that you can come from a simple village like ours and be a meaningful person in this country and that really pushed me to try and do big things.

That spark would turn into a fire when he was admitted to the University of Nairobi to study Industrial Chemistry and it never left him.

"In my first year, I even wanted to try and gun for the post of representative of the first years, that is how much belief I had in myself," he recalls.

"I joined SONU and became very active in its operations and politics but I still knew I had to study hard to pull myself from poverty."

But this would later be heavily tested when in his third year, he tried applying for work attachments but everything he received was regret letters. It was a hard time because attachments were mandatory.

"I applied attachments, tried my luck all over Industrial Area but to my shock and to a serious demoralisation of my life, I did not get even one company to offer attachment," he said.

Mukunji was left dismayed and wondered how a young, smart man like him with good grades would not find a place to work and this, again, made him helpless and wondered what the future really held for him.

“I was very angry and wondered what would happen to me when I finished university and needed to find a paying job to sustain me through life,” he says.

“That is when I decided that I would not look for another job and immediately we came back to school after our three-month break, I used some of the Ksh.25,000 HELB fund to register my company ERS.”

He did not know what he wanted to do with his new company nor have anyone to hold his hand in the wild jungle of entrepreneurship but he just had hope.

Mukunji credits Professor Raphael Munavu as having helped spark an idea that would go on and change his life and get his family out of poverty.

“In fourth year, we studied a unit called renewable energy with Professor Munavu and he challenged us to try and be employers, not just employees,” he remembers.

From that class, Mukunji started researching on renewable energy, solar works, storage and backup of power and saw a major opportunity.

“That is when I started writing proposals to institutions pitching that I could help supply them with backup power but at a cheaper cost because I would take their waste batteries,” says Mukunji.

He was now ready to conquer the world but even that would not be soo easy, his proposals went unanswered but he was not about to give up.

“National Bank replied and asked me for a meeting largely because I had pointed out that it was dangerous to keep dead batteries in unsecured areas. They tasked me to go and pick all their batteries across the country,” he recalls.

Ironically, he would store all these batteries at his brother’s house where he would look for clients who deal with dead batteries.

“I spoke to an Indian businessman who offered Ksh.200,000 and I realised if he would offer such an amount, it means it was worth much more,” he laughs.

He then started calling the companies who had initially supplied the batteries and that is when he received his first major cheque.

“One of the brands that I emailed, came and saw all the batteries in my possession and they wrote a cheque of Ksh.800,000 and from there, I knew I was on the right path,” he says.

Today, the small company he started in his fourth year, now employs 60 people and the company is still successful.

The Manyatta MP says understanding how hard it is for youth to get jobs and opportunities, he wants to try and use his power and office to help the youth.

"My desire is to liberate our people. The youth of Manyatta and Kenya are suffering. I will initiate legislation aimed at helping the youth earn a living," Mukunji says.

He says Kenya should have a database of all youth who are skilled in different fields and the database should be ward-based so that the statistics can be easy to interpret.

“I am about to launch a program in my constituency where youths can get opportunities. I want to use data, and statistics to know which jobs are these young people looking for.

Politically, Mukunji says he first vied for the Manyatta MP seat in 2017 but lost because he joined the race late but still managed to garner around 10,000 votes.

He learnt his lesson quickly and embarked on projects aimed at benefitting people in 2018.

He traversed the entire constituency promoting himself and helping out where he could and this paid much divided this year when he asked for their votes on a UDA ticket. The population listened and gave him over 91% of the votes cast.