Neema: Where Dry Land Learns to Bloom

The land in Marsabit, Kenya doesn’t forgive easily. Neema learned that early.

Northern Kenya’s drylands have always demanded resilience. But in recent years, the droughts here have grown longer, and their cost has landed hardest on children like Neema’s classmates – kids pulled out of school not because they didn’t want to learn, but because their families could no longer afford the basics: books, uniforms, sometimes just the bus fare to get there.

17-year-old Neema saw this happening around her for years. She had an idea, even then…that trees could be part of the answer. A greener campus. Shade against the punishing afternoon heat. Something planted that could, eventually, be sold to help a struggling family stay afloat. But an idea isn’t the same as knowing how to act on it. 

“I had thoughts about what could change,” she says, “but I didn’t have the courage to start.”

That changed when Neema joined the Enterprise Challenge, delivered through Asante Africa Foundation’s Youth Livelihood Program. The program doesn’t lecture young people about entrepreneurship – it hands them a simulation, a “Popup Shop” game, and lets them fail safely first: budgeting, planning, making decisions, working with people who see things differently than they do. Underneath the game are the skills that matter most in a place like Marsabit, Kenya – financial literacy, digital tools, ethical decision-making, and the confidence to speak in a room and be heard.

For Neema, the confidence came slowly, then all at once. She started small – planting tree and fruit seedlings on her school’s compound, an area that had been dry and bare for as long as anyone could remember. Then she began selling seedlings, fruit, and vegetables to her wider community. It wasn’t just income. It was proof of concept, and proof to herself.

Today, the difference is visible from a distance. What was once dust and glare at Loglogo Girls’ Secondary School is now a cooler, greener stretch of campus, with shade where students can actually concentrate during the hottest hours of the day. Neema uses the money from her sales to help cover school supplies for classmates whose families can’t stretch their income that far – the same kind of hardship she used to watch from the outside, unable to do much about it.

What’s changed most, though, might be harder to see in a photo. The girl who once lacked the courage to speak up now leads. She organises tree-planting sessions. She teaches younger students why the environment around them matters, and how to act instead of just worrying. Neighbours have started planting seedlings of their own, following her lead – one more sign that Neema’s Enterprise Challenge didn’t just change her circumstances, it changed how she sees her own capacity to lead.

“Our land was dry,” Neema says, “but I learned that hope can grow anywhere.”

It’s a line that could describe a garden. It could just as easily describe a girl who decided that a hard place was worth fighting for – and found, through the Youth Livelihood Program, that she had exactly what it took to do it.