Eyes In The Sky

Discover how one woman is using drone technology to improve the lives of Kenyan coffee farmers

At the age of nine, Lyela Mutisya left Kenya to move to Chicago with her mother. Some 14 years later, she returned to the country to discover that her father was a coffee farmer. As they walked around his farm, he told Lyela it would one day be hers. But she was shocked to learn how little he received for his beans and of the hardships Kenyan coffee farmers faced.

The cycle of low returns is common in Kenya. Farmers don’t receive enough money for their coffee to be able to invest in making their coffee better and their farms more productive. Fertiliser, for example, is one of the most critical inputs in coffee production and also one of the most expensive. Low-earning farmers are unable to afford fertiliser, which results in low yields and lower-quality coffee. And so the cycle continues.

“Before I returned to the US, I promised my father I’d figure out a way he could make more money,” says Lyela. One of the ways in which this can happen, she believes, is by using drone technology.

In 2014, Lyela enrolled at Lewis University in Chicago to study aviation administration and unmanned aircraft systems. At the same time, keen to learn more about coffee, she started attending cuppings.