The funniest thing to me is that in majority of the failure cases fellows are seeking huge returns for very little to no effort. As you say they listen to the watchman say his cousin is making a killing selling snake bones to tourists and the next thing you know they are borrowing to the hilt from their Sacco to invest in a snake bones business (remotely of course) and then getting shocked and surprised when they lose their shirts with swarms of auctioneers after their hides.

I've said it before; unfortunately, most people are just talkers with very good ideas in their heads but when the rubber meets the road and it's time to implement said ideas, everything crumbles to dust.

Either because their cucu swindled them, the crop was destroyed by mildew (why didn't they spray?), their leased Uber was stolen and dismantled for scrap metal, the list (of excuses) is always endless. In other words they did not have the talent, time or energy to be hands on and/or basic financial literacy escaped them completely. Biashara si kalongo wala birikicho/banta where one plays for twenty minutes then goes home to sleep. It takes talent, time, financial literacy, long-term persistence and good old buckets of jasho.