From hope to ruin: The rise and fall of Siaya's fruit factory
Nyanza
By
Isaiah Gwengi
| Oct 05, 2025
A ghostly silence greets visitors at the Ramba Fruit Processing Factory, where rusting machines sit idle and overgrown grasses tell the story of a facility that once offered hope to farmers but is now struggling to survive.
From the gate, the disused facility gives the impression of an abandoned factory that saw farmers, politicians and development partners flocking to the gleaming plant, hailing it as the future of Siaya’s agriculture.
And when Siaya Governor James Orengo commissioned it in November 2022, it was touted as a project that would make Siaya an agro-industrial hub.
“We have today officially commissioned the Ramba Fruit Processing Factory and ‘Made in Siaya’ is a brand that we are focusing on,” said Orengo.
Today, the factory stands largely idle with over Sh33 million in investments but little to show.
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The idea of the factory was first conceived in 2013, when the national government constructed the initial infrastructure at a cost of Sh14 million. The facility was then handed over to the Ramba Food Producers and Marketing Cooperative Society (RFPMCS), a farmers’ group formed to run the project.
But without technical expertise or sufficient funding, the plant remained largely dormant. In 2019, a fresh lifeline arrived when USAID injected Sh19.5 million to import fruit-processing machines from India. The investment raised expectations that the long-stalled factory would finally roar to life.
Still, bureaucratic delays, management wrangles and lack of clear market strategies slowed progress. By the time of its official launch nearly a decade after inception; the project had already swallowed tens of millions in public and donor funds.
For farmers like Alice Ouko, the revival was nothing short of a miracle.
“Brokers from Kisumu would come and literally shake off every fruit from the trees in our homes. The only alternative was to hawk them in Ndori. Some would rot in the process,” she recalls.
With the factory finally operational, farmers were promised a structured market. A kilo of mangoes would fetch Sh15, payable immediately or within a week. They also received training in top-working techniques, blending traditional and exotic varieties for higher yields.
But even as the machines imported with USAID funds whirred into action, cracks quickly appeared.
Farmers, who spoke to The Standard, said the plant operated sporadically, with management insisting on Grade 3 fruits, a quality threshold that excluded many smallholders.
“They told us to bring only grade three fruits, but most of what we grow does not qualify. The little they take is not enough to sustain us,” Boniface Ochieng lamented.
He added that payment delays and limited marketing efforts compounded frustrations. Soon, the optimism of 2022 began to fade.
“We were told this was the answer to our struggles. Now it is just a white elephant that runs once in a while,” said Benard Oluoch, a farmer in Ramba.
According to the county executive for Agriculture Mr Sylvester K'Okoth, the facility was operating in the hands of a private investor until financial and medical challenges interfered with its operations.
"It has modern equipment that we hope will be revived under the same or a different investor," he said.