Is Wealth Only for the Salaried? Or Can a Mama Mboga Build It Too?

Is wealth reserved for the formally employed?For those with payslips, pension plans and benefits?

Or can a mama mboga arranging sukuma wiki at dawn build wealth?Can the woman selling mitumba under the hot sun build wealth?Can the one frying samosas by the roadside, or delivering milk door to door, ever rise beyond survival?

These are not theoretical questions for us.

These are the women we meet every week through our Fanikisha trainings at Kianda Foundation. Women with calloused hands and ambitious hearts. Women who wake up before the sun and sleep long after it sets. Women who are not lazy. Not careless. Not incapable. Just often excluded.

For too long, wealth has been presented as something that belongs only to the salaried. Something that requires a certain level of income, education or access. Something that begins “when I earn more.”

But what if wealth does not begin with how much you earn?What if it begins with how you think?

A salary can give structure but structure alone does not create wealth. Wealth is built through habits, knowledge, consistency and small faithful decisions repeated over time.

A mama mboga may not earn a fixed income, but she understands cash flow.A mitumba seller understands margins.A woman selling samosas tracks cost of production and profit per unit.

These are not small things. These are the foundations of enterprise.

The difference between surviving and building wealth is often not income size it is strategy.

• When a woman earning five hundred shillings a day learns to separate capital from profit, she is building wealth.

• When she begins saving consistently, even in small amounts, she is building wealth.

• When she understands the investment tools available to her, she is building wealth.

• When she shifts from reactive spending to intentional planning, she is building wealth.

  
  

Wealth does not despise small beginnings.

Through Fanikisha, we meet women who:

• Support entire households from informal businesses

• Educate their children from roadside earnings

• Carry family responsibilities with extraordinary resilience

  
  

They are already managing money. Already budgeting. Already negotiating. Already planning. What many lack is not drive it is access to financial knowledge that speaks their language and meets them where they are. And that is where transformation begins.

On 6th March 2026 at 11 AM EAT, Kianda Foundation will host a free webinar to have this conversation. Our speaker, Wangui Maranga, a Senior Financial Services Executive, will guide us through practical, accessible financial principles that apply to everyone not just the formally employed or high earners.

Register here and be part of the conversation.

At Kianda Foundation, we believe economic empowerment is not charity it is dignity.

When a woman builds wealth, she builds security.When she builds security, she builds confidence.When she builds confidence, she builds choices.And when women have choices, communities change.