Kenya Textile Industry: The Rise of a “Pioneer of Prosperity”

Eva Muraya is an inspired businesswoman who became an entrepreneur and started her own merchandise branding company in her home country.

Eva Muraya is the owner and Managing Director of Color Creations, a successful clothing and textile company in her home country of Kenya. In her career history, Eva Muraya has been one of hundreds on a workforce but today, as an entrepreneur, she is in the fortunate position of personally generating employment for others.

Eva Muraya: Owner and Managing Director of Color Creations

To Eva Muraya, a hundred job opportunities created through entrepreneurship in an African context represents a hundred local families that will be financially empowered. Eva reports that she

Cannot explain the joy and self-fulfilment of being directly responsible for impacting in as positive a way as possible the lives of a hundred people

A decade and a half’s time spent in the fields of marketing and communications equipped Eva with the skills that aided her to construct her own company. This profitable screen-printing and embroidery services business showcases Eva’s belief that wealth can easily be created through entrepreneurship.

The execution of this very philosophy has led Eva to hold the title of Kenyan ‘Woman Entrepreneur of the Year’. A self-pledged ambassador for entrepreneurship, Eva’s excellence in African business has resulted in her being recognised as a ‘Pioneer of Prosperity’.

Eva Muraya attributes a restless spirit as the motivation drive that helped her to become an entrepreneur.  According to Eva, she was inspired at a time when there was a call for Kenya and African countries to move away from a dependence on aid and create trade. Eva answered this call, stepping out from under the glass ceiling and stepping up to the challenge of devoting her talent to her own business, Taurus Afrika.

If our people can find impetus enough to invest in enterprises that are owned, that remain here then wealth is resident within the Africa continent” says Eva, “I’d like to be part of that successful story.

Forgoing salaried comforts and embracing budgetary limitations was a first-hand experience for this entrepreneur, who expanded her company through a business merger in 2002. This move reinvented Taurus Afrika as Color Creations. Color Creations now not only supplies corporate companies with branded clothing and merchandise; it also encourages corporate thinking in individuals starting up a small business brand of their own.

Eva Muraya fulfils a mentorship position through her social upliftment projects geared to polish the business practices of newcomers to the clothing industry by teaching novice entrepreneurs how to sell and how to apply the best business practices to their micro enterprises. Eva comments that

When you get completely committed to what entrepreneurship can do in up scaling people’s socio-economic levels then you’ll find that it is the natural thing, you want more people to enjoy the same opportunity you have.

Eva’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project Be Unlimited Ltd. explores the options of micro financing from Equity Bank where the youth has access to affordable loans to invest in stock to be sold to generate business income. This new business income will regenerate the local economy and ultimately expand Eva’s CSR initiative globally.

Initially Eva Muraya herself was assisted by a Dutch NGO called PUM, comprised of a team of over four thousand senior experts from various market sectors. These business leaders volunteer their collective commercial aptitudes as specialist technical support structures to developing businesses in developing countries. PUM can be approached by anyone wanting advice.

Eva admits that in different forums and in different ventures she has

Over the years become increasingly involved in advocating for entrepreneurship as the main way through which our continent will reverse the economic ills that continue to plaque us a continent.” Eva feels that “Africa needs to gain the confidence, the courage, the skills and the technical competence to invest in that opportunity because we have got great resources here. We have got great labour force here and we’ve got a great sense of innovation and creativity so I think that entrepreneurship really is the thing that is going to stir our livelihoods around and transform our peoples’ socio-economic lifestyles.