By the time they reach Mogotio Dairy Cooperative, their loads add up to anywhere between 3,000 and 8,000 litres a day, depending on the season. There, the milk is weighed, tested and cooled, then sold fresh or turned into yoghurt and traditional fermented milks such as maziwa mala and mursik, sold under the cooperative's own brand, Equator Milk.
Founded in 1963, the cooperative has grown to 4,700 registered members, around 1,500 of whom supply milk regularly. Keeping all that milk fresh is the cooperative's first job, because milk that isn't cooled spoils within hours. That makes power the backbone of the business, and for years, it came at a steep price.
"I supply milk here myself, so I've seen this from both sides," says George Korir, the cooperative's chairman. "Every month, a big share of what we earned went to power, money we wanted to pay our farmers or put into growing the business. We knew what we wanted to build here. Energy costs kept slowing us down."
Grid electricity ran everything from the cooling tanks and glycol chillers to the pasteurisers, scales and packaging machines, at a cost of KSh 250,000 to KSh 500,000 a month. The bills limited how much milk the cooperative could afford to process. Blackouts made things worse. The diesel generator, burning 240 to 300 litres a month even in calmer months at a cost of up to KSh 65,000, could not run everything, including one of the plant's two milk chillers. Work stopped, milk risked spoiling, and the cooperative still had to pay its staff while operations stood still. Power surges damaged equipment too, and last year's repairs cost nearly KSh 200,000.
Customers felt it as well. "Because of the heat here, our clients are used to buying chilled milk," says Joseph Kimeto, the cooperative's manager. "When we can't supply it, we get complaints and our sales drop."
The cooperative already knew what it wanted.
"Nobody had to convince us that solar was the answer," Korir says. "We had already brought in technicians and looked at the numbers. What we couldn't do was raise that kind of money upfront without putting the cooperative at risk."
That changed when Mogotio secured financing through the Distributed Renewable Energy Ecosystem Model (DREEM) Programme, implemented by the Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC) with support from the Mott Foundation. Operating in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, DREEM works to solarise agricultural value chains, enabling the switch from costly, unreliable power to clean energy that translates into lower costs, fewer losses and better livelihoods.
For Mogotio, that support came through DREEM's Kenya hub. Installation began at the end of August 2026, and within two weeks, 81 panels were powering the entire plant, backed by batteries that keep it running after dark.
"We designed the system to run the whole plant," says Benard Boinet, the project's lead engineer. "It should pay for itself in about three and a half years, and the panels are built to last 25, so the cooperative has decades of low-cost power ahead of it."
The chairman expects the change to show up first in the electricity bill. "Next month Kenya Power watashtuka," Korir says. "Itabidi wakuje hapa kuconfirm mbona hawaoni pesa yetu yenye wamezoea." Next month, Kenya Power will be shocked. They'll have to come here to check why they're not seeing the money they're used to.
For Kimeto, the manager, lower bills are only the beginning. Today, about 15 per cent of the milk Mogotio receives is turned into value-added products. With reliable power, the cooperative aims to raise that to 50 per cent, enough to meet growing demand for its maziwa mala and yoghurt and to create new jobs along the way. The gains will reach farmers, too. "One of our priorities is increasing what we pay our 1,500 farmers," Kimeto says. "They currently receive approximately KSh 52 per litre, and we're expecting to raise that by KSh 4, to KSh 56."
"Reliable power means a cooperative like Mogotio can stop working around outages and start planning for growth," says James Mbatia, DREEM Programme Manager. "That's what DREEM exists to do, and it's at the heart of our work at KCIC. When you solarise a value chain, the impact reaches far beyond one cooperative: farmers earn more, more produce is processed and reaches the market, and new jobs are created. This is what catalysing climate entrepreneurship in Africa looks like in practice: sustainable enterprises that grow, and communities that grow with them."
Back at the cooperative, the motorbikes keep arriving with the morning's milk. What has changed is the power behind it. With the sun running its plant, Mogotio is free to pursue the plans it has long held: better pay for its farmers, more milk turned into Equator Milk products, and new jobs in Baringo.