Graduate – Wanjiru Kago

Meet the participant: Wanjiru Kago, Founder of The Lady’s Auto Clinic Nairobi, Kenya. Wanjiru Kago watched her father sell spare parts from as young as 10 years of age. This family shop has been in existence since 1992. Over the years, she noticed that very few ladies came to buy the spare parts. Most women would send their mechanics and in many cases, they ended up being swindled. This used to bother her a lot; seeing people taking advantage of these women.

After high school, Wanjiru ventured into the medical field. In August 2020, her career came to an end due to the COVID–19 Pandemic. Most companies could not pay salaries and were forced to lay off their staff. With her vast experience in car accessories, Wanjiru put up a spare parts shop in October 2020 in a transit town with lots of trucks. Here she has been able to sell spare parts for trucks and small cars. Although the location is a bit remote and most of the operations are manual, the business has recently advanced to keeping stock using computers.

Wanjiru has observed that in the automotive industry, there’s lack of safe spaces where women can go and get their car problems sorted. Additionally, most local garages rarely have a comfortable place to sit as you wait. Also, mechanics rarely share with you what they’re doing to the cars. She has founded The Lady’s Auto Clinic; a lady-owned business that offers automotive services ranging from mechanical repair to car advice sale of spare parts and general car advice to ladies who own cars or aspire to own one in the future. The idea is to have lady mechanics running the place, focusing on skilling ladies on mechanics and raising confident drivers. The big dream is to have a ladies’ engineering school.

“Before applying for this program, I looked at Sheworks Africa‘s website and saw the mentorship part. That was it for me,” says Wanjiru. “I love the different experiences I’m getting and the success stories from the facilitators and the other participants. I’m really grateful for this opportunity that you guys have offered me; to train me, to mentor me and basically walk with me.”

The Lady’s Auto Clinic’s dream of being a training school, garage and auto shop (all in one place) is now becoming a reality.
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