Dave Okech Okech

Dave Okech is a social entrepreneur with over 10 years experience in the agribusiness sector. Dave's proudest achievement is the innovation of AquaRech App. When he started fish farming, his aim was to produce fish and sell to the traders, however, he learnt that the challenges facing the aquaculture sector was not only on fish production but was the lack of access to high quality feed, lack of technical assistance and women traders lacking information about the produced fish and small holder farmers struggling to access rights in the lake to farm fish. In order to solve these challenges, Dave developed AquaRech App; a centralised database system that connects the farmers, fish traders and feed suppliers. The innovation is integrated with IoT technology which has a sensor that transmits water temperature data from the farm to the app. This enables the app to calculate the exact amount of feed to be fed reducing waste of feed by 20%. The application has enabled farmers to access high quality feed with better feed conversion ratio and connected farmers fish produce directly to the traders eliminating unscrupulous middlemen. As a result farmers are realising a reduced production period from 13 months to 8 months, increased yields, reduced production cost by 30%, and increased profit by 25%. The application has brought dignity to women and girls by enabling them to access fish at their fingertips at the comfort of their phones without subjecting themselves to the dehumanising act of sex for fish trade, contributing towards elimination of HIV/AIDS in Kenya. This is the Blue ICT Revolution! Second, as a Leader, Dave, initiated the formation of Cage Fish Farmers Association of Kenya in 2018 to tackle tedious licensing process and importation of cheap poor quality Chinese fish by cartels. We managed to get the government scrapped import licensing cost for feeds and cages and effected import levies on cheap Chinese fish to create a level playing field with locally farmed fresh fish. Third: To tackle high capital cost of stopping women and youths from investing in cage fish farming, Dave developed an inclusive community-based cage fish farming model where women and youth are given cages, feeds, fingerlings and technical assistance through an out-grower model and the cost of the investment is deducted over a period of time. Creating what is called Blue Finance for the Blue Economy. Dave holds a Diploma in Actuarial Science, has won awards: Mandela Washington Fellow 2016, Acumen Fellow 2019, Global Farmer Network Fellow 2020