<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Food recalls in 2023 reached the highest levels the U.S. has recorded since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly driven by undisclosed allergens and listeria contamination, according to a new report released Thursday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Some 313 food recalls (impacting products that were still on sale) and alerts (involving products no longer on sale, but may be in consumers’ homes) were announced last year by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an 8% increase from 2022 and the highest number since the COVID pandemic began in 2020, according to a report released Thursday by the nonprofit U.S. Public Research Interest Group Education Fund.



Contaminated food resulted in six deaths and over 1,100 illnesses last year, though the researchers suspect there were more illnesses since most people recover from food poisoning without medical attention.



The most commonly recalled food items in 2023 were snacks like cookies and granola bars, which accounted for one in five recalls, though other commonly recalled foods included fruit—mainly cantaloupes—beef, soup, salads and greens, poultry, cheese, vegetables, supplements and pet food, according to the report.



Almost half of all recalls (49.3%) in 2023 were related to allergens undeclared on packaging, while other major reasons for recalls were listeria contamination (15%), salmonella contamination (8.6%) and uninspected products (6.1%).



This uptick in undisclosed allergen cases was partially driven by the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/allergic-sesame-food-labels-now-must-list-sesame-allergen#:~:text=As%20of%20January%201%2C%202023%2C%20sesame%20is%20required%20to%20be,milk" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">inclusion</a>&nbsp;of sesame—which accounted for 39% of the increase—as a required disclosed allergen, a rule that began in January 2023.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-the-5-biggest-food-recalls-of-2024-so-far">WHAT ARE THE 5 BIGGEST FOOD RECALLS OF 2024 SO FAR?</h2>



<ul>
<li>Dairy products: An investigation into a “multi-year, multistate” <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2024/02/08/costco-trader-joes-walmart-recall-dairy-products-over-listeria-outbreak-what-to-know/?sh=7902e28a47f5">listeria outbreak</a> was reopened after listeria was found in several food products containing dairy like queso fresco and cotija cheese. This outbreak includes cases dating back to 2014, and the FDA investigated it in 2017 and 2021, though it couldn’t link a specific brand to the outbreak. The most recent investigation was reopened in January, and manufacturer Rizo-Lopez Foods voluntarily recalled around <a href="https://www.fda.gov/media/176015/download?attachment" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">60</a> dairy products. Major retailers like Walmart, Costco and Trader Joe’s recalled products including salad and taco kits due to potential contamination. As of April 9, the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/outbreak-investigation-listeria-monocytogenes-queso-fresco-and-cotija-cheese-february-2024" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> the outbreak is over. The agencies said there were 26 cases, 23 hospitalizations and two deaths across 11 states.</li>



<li>Trader Joe’s Dumplings: Over 61,000 pounds of Trader Joe’s steamed chicken soup dumplings were recalled in March due to potential hard plastic contamination from a permanent marker. The products were voluntarily recalled by manufacturer CJ Foods Manufacturing Beaumont Corporation, <a href="https://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls-alerts/cj-foods-manufacturing-beaumont-corporation-recalls-trader-joes-chicken-soup" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to the USDA. The problem was discovered after customers submitted complaints of hard plastics in their dumplings, though no adverse reactions were reported.</li>



<li>Ground cinnamon: The FDA issued an <a href="https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/fda-alert-concerning-certain-cinnamon-products-due-presence-elevated-levels-lead" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">alert</a> in March warning it found unsafe levels of lead in six ground cinnamon products. These products were sold in discount stores like Dollar Tree and Family Dollar across several states. This recall came after the FDA investigated the recall of lead-tainted <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2024/02/07/lead-poisoned-applesauce-ecuadorian-cinnamon-processor-likely-source-behind-recalled-pouches-fda-says/?sh=27a6e3082618">cinnamon applesauces</a> in 2023 that led to over 500 reports of adverse events in children.</li>



<li>Trader Joe’s cashews: Wenders LLC, the manufacturer of the nuts, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/caileygleeson/2024/03/18/trader-joes-cashews-recall-product-pulled-in-16-states-over-salmonella-concerns/?sh=3ac5e89e58d4">recalled</a> four lots of Trader Joe’s 50% Less Sodium Roasted &amp; Salted Whole Cashews in March due to potential salmonella contamination. Though no illnesses have been reported, the potentially contaminated nuts were sold in 16 states.</li>



<li>Quaker Oats products: Quaker Oats <a href="https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/update-quaker-issues-revised-recall-notice-additional-products-due-possible-health-risk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">expanded</a> its list of recalled products in January after it recalled several in December due to possible salmonella contamination. This expanded list included over 20 granola, protein and cereal bars, cereals, instant oatmeals and snack mixes sold in all 50 states. However, no adverse events have been reported.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



48 million. That’s how many Americans the CDC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/2011-foodborne-estimates.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">estimates</a>&nbsp;get sick annually due to foodborne disease, totaling one out of six Americans. Out of that number, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Food gets recalled in one of four ways, according to the report. One way is consumers get sick, seek medical attention and then local officials or the CDC test fluids and trace an outbreak to a specific food item; another is consumers file a complaint with companies or regulators; a third is local, state or federal officials discover an issue through investigations or routine surveillance; and the other method is by companies self-reporting a problem after testing. The FDA regulates around&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fda.gov/media/143704/download" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">78%</a>&nbsp;of the country’s food supply, and its oversight includes everything except meat, poultry and some fish and eggs products, which are regulated by the USDA. The FDA was behind 224 recalls in 2023, while the USDA accounted for 89, according to the report. Although the number of recalls via the FDA were virtually unchanged, the number of USDA recalls increased by 31% in 2023 compared with 2022—the highest levels since 2019.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2024/02/08/costco-trader-joes-walmart-recall-dairy-products-over-listeria-outbreak-what-to-know/?sh=7902e28a47f5">Costco, Trader Joe’s, Walmart Recall Dairy Products Over Listeria Outbreak—What To Know</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2024/02/07/lead-poisoned-applesauce-ecuadorian-cinnamon-processor-likely-source-behind-recalled-pouches-fda-says/?sh=27a6e3082618">Lead-Poisoned Applesauce: Ecuadorian Cinnamon Processor ‘Likely Source’ Behind Recalled Pouches, FDA Says</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/caileygleeson/2024/03/18/trader-joes-cashews-recall-product-pulled-in-16-states-over-salmonella-concerns/?sh=3ac5e89e58d4">Trader Joe’s Cashews Recall: Product Pulled In 16 States Over Salmonella Concerns</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

A Safeway Grocery Store Ahead Of Alberston’s Earnings Figures

2023 Had Most Food Recalls Since Start Of COVID-19 Pandemic, Report Finds

Food waste costs grocery stores $28 billion every year. Afresh is working to slash that number.



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Albertsons&nbsp;wants to sell fresh raspberries. Not raspberries that are mushy. Or moldy. Or that will be inedible the day after you stick them in your fridge. But raspberries that are red and juicy and delicious.



It’s astonishingly difficult to pull off. In the past, store managers were essentially making their best guess when deciding how much to order. Too little, and the customer walks away empty-handed. Too much, and the raspberries end up sitting around for too long and go bad.



“Previously, produce ordering was a manual process, which meant stores were more likely to inaccurately estimate the type and amount of produce customers would buy,” said Suzanne Long, chief sustainability officer for Albertsons.



Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons, one of the nation&#8217;s largest grocers with $78 billion in annual revenue, began using artificial intelligence software across stores last year from a startup called Afresh Technologies to help it forecast demand and place orders for the type of food that tends to spoil the fastest, like bananas, bell peppers and bagged salads. Albertsons is now placing more frequent&nbsp;orders for smaller quantities.



“We’re trying to have full shelves and an empty backroom when the next truck comes in,” said Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz.



San Francisco-based Afresh, started in 2017, is still a nascent business –&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that its revenue last year was under $10 million – but it’s growing fast. With $150 million in equity funding from Spark Capital, Insight Partners and other top VCs, Afresh has rolled out its software at 3,300 stores that include Albertsons (whose stores represent the majority of its business), WinCo Foods and Save Mart. Supermarket employees wielding iPads punch in how many apples, heads of broccoli and cherry tomatoes they have left on shelves and then review automated suggestions for how much to order.



More grocery stores are adopting this type of technology in an effort to cut down on how much food they toss each year, an amount that totals $28 billion, according to estimates from ReFED, a nonprofit that tracks food waste. Since stores tend to err on the side of ordering too much, they throw away about 5% to 6% of fresh food, Schwartz said. Rates can be twice that among prepared foods. In addition to being bad for the environment, it’s bad for business because it means lost sales and crimped profits.



Afresh CEO Matt SchwartzAFRESH



Afresh says that its customers typically reduce food waste by one quarter, which can lift operating margins in the produce category by 40% and deliver tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions, in profit. “We tell chief financial officers, ‘You’re going to smash your numbers,’” said Schwartz.



That’s a welcome message at a time when grocery stores, which have notoriously thin profit margins, are grappling with the rising cost of food. Albertsons, whose brands include Safeway, Vons and Jewel-Osco and which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/business/kroger-albertsons-merger.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">has announced plans to merge</a>&nbsp;with Kroger, rolled out the software across nearly all 2,200 of its stores last year. The company has said that its goal is to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.albertsonscompanies.com/our-impact/planet/food-waste/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">eliminate food waste going to landfills</a>&nbsp;by 2030. “If you can pick up three to five points of gross margin with this thing without having to raise prices, that is huge,” said Walter Robb, the former CEO of Whole Foods, who has invested in Afresh.



To assist with orders, the startup makes sense of a jumble of data to forecast demand better than any human can. It starts with the history of how an item has sold over the past several years, folding in sales data on a daily basis. It then factors in anything that may affect demand, such as upcoming promotions, weather, holidays and the day that food stamps are doled out. Internal estimates attempt to account for the unforgiving shelf life of finicky items like avocados and peaches, which a store is always racing against the clock to sell.



This is a big improvement over an employee going product by product, using their judgment to figure out how many Gala apples to order versus Honeycrisp and Fuji and Pink Lady and Granny Smith.



It means that fruits and veggies are not sitting around for nearly as long at grocers like Cub, a Minnesota chain with 100 stores, which is moving produce in and out of its stores 7% faster than before. The retailer has also seen a nice 2.5% boost in sales from improving its in-stock levels.



“Remember that retailing is all about having the right product at the right price at the right time,” said Robb. “This is a tool to make that happen.”



The backroom of a Cub grocery store before they started working with Afresh (left) and after.AFRESH



The stakes are high in the fresh section of a grocery store, which tends to be a big traffic driver, especially for return trips. Improving the quality and selection of fresh foods has been a major priority for Albertsons, which sees it as a way to boost sales and steal market share from competitors. “The fresh portfolio really, really matters,” Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran said in a quarterly earnings call last month.



Schwartz, 33, a former Bain consultant with an MBA from Stanford, started Afresh six years ago after learning how much fresh food grocery stores were throwing away, and how little technology existed to address the problem. Schwartz has always been a health nut, who practiced intermittent fasting and designed meal and workout plans for friends. Early in his career, he’d worked at Simple Mills, which makes crackers, cookies and other snacks with alt-ingredients like almond flour and coconut sugar.



Afresh charges each store department hundreds of dollars per month to use its software. It says it has prevented 43 million pounds of food from being thrown away since inception.



“This technology is one of a small handful we’re seeing really take off,” said Dana Gunders, executive director of ReFED.



As AI-powered ordering gains wider adoption, it&nbsp;<a href="http://pacificcoastcollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/PCFWC-Case-Study_AI_Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">could help cut food waste at the store level in half by 2030</a>, according to the Pacific Coast Collaborative, a multi-state governmental initiative to reduce greenhouse gas. Similar technology is sold by companies like Shelf Engine, which signed up Kroger as a customer but subsequently laid off a significant portion of its staff.



Afresh is now signing up more stores and expanding beyond produce with existing customers. This year, it expects to go into another 7,500 departments, which includes new forays into the meat and seafood counters, the deli and the prepared foods section. It is also introducing more tools for grocery stores, like one that helps employees complete monthly inventory checks.



The company now assists with ordering a tenth of all produce sold in America, said Schwartz. “We plan to be preventing over 100 million pounds of food waste per year very shortly,” he said.

E-commerce augmented reality marketing in supermarket mobile phone app AI artificial intelligence

This AI Startup Has Saved Grocers From Tossing Millions Of Pounds Of Food

By Sabdiyo Dido Bashuna, Senior Technical Adviser Value Chains &amp; Agribusiness, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)



As Covid-19 continues its spread across Africa, the restrictions to limit infection are having a disproportionate impact on half of the continent’s food growers and producers: women.



At a time when food security is under extra strain because of the pandemic, women in agriculture are enduring extra hygiene and social distancing measures on top of endemic inequalities, which together undermine their capacity to respond and recover from the crisis.



But the pandemic has also triggered creativity and survival techniques, leading to product diversity, new digital marketing and distribution channels.



Across Africa, women make up&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/3/am307e/am307e00.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">50 per cent</a>&nbsp;of the agricultural labour force as well as often taking primary responsibility for caring for families, households and communities.



Yet historic inequalities mean women are facing the added pressure of the coronavirus outbreak while also having access to just a fraction of the necessary resources, from land and labour to finance and trainings.



In normal times, the productivity gap between men and women farmers is an estimated&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i2050e/i2050e04.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">30 per cent</a>&nbsp;as a result of unequal access to resources, but with shocks like coronavirus exacerbating existing inequalities, the potential impact on food production, food security and nutrition could be far greater. &nbsp;&nbsp;



Better supporting African women in agriculture would help bridge this gap and increase both yields and profitability, providing more food for the poor, sick and hungry, and more income to support rural families during the global health emergency. So how can we do this during the pandemic?



One challenge of persistent gender inequality is that women, whose roles are often home-based and even more so during the coronavirus outbreak, tend not to present themselves for support.



The first barrier to overcome, then, is reaching women in the first place, whether with agricultural advice, financial support or valuable farm inputs like seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.



For more than three decades, CTA has worked closely with extension workers in Africa, who make direct contact with women through cooperatives and communities while also championing digital tools and services that are less intrusive or demanding.



Online networks such as&nbsp;<a href="https://value4her.hivebrite.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VALUE4HERConnect</a>&nbsp;have provided a platform for African women entrepreneurs in agriculture that offers networking, mentoring and training support in a way that is convenient for heads of households.



These kinds of networks are also helpful for addressing a second challenge resulting from gender inequality, which is that the majority of women’s agri-businesses tend to be smaller and more likely to fail given the low levels of resilience.



To be effective, any tailored support for women must also be channelled with such small businesses in mind. Only a small fraction of rural women own bank account, for example, so accessing such funds is a challenge.



Providing grants and flexible loans for women can help them afford financial services like insurance and credit that protect their livelihoods against stresses while allowing them to invest in growing their enterprises.



Additionally, for women to fulfil their often care-based roles in households and on farms throughout the pandemic, they must be safe, both from the risk of infection and gender-based violence, which has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2020/issue-brief-covid-19-and-ending-violence-against-women-and-girls-en.pdf?la=en&amp;vs=5006" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increased</a>&nbsp;as a result of lockdowns.



Finally, the new coping mechanisms and survival techniques adopted by women in agribusiness during the pandemic need to be documented, supported and scaled to cushion them from failure and help build resilience against future shocks.



Governments, health agencies and non-profits must provide technical assistance to help educate women on navigating the complexities caused by this pandemic, from basic hygiene measures to skills such as business management, renegotiation of supply contracts, or accessing business support.



Women smallholders already play such a vital role in producing and providing food in low-income countries, which has become all the more important in the wake of coronavirus.



But without targeted and appropriate support, they miss fulfilling their potential, which is a loss to women and families that depend on their incomes, and in the grip of a pandemic, it may also be a fatal oversight.

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Op-Ed: Why African Women In Agriculture Face The Greatest Double Burden Of Covid-19 And Food Insecurity

TOPLINE: More than 40% of mothers with children under the age of 12 in the United States said that they have experienced food insecurity since the COVID-19 crisis began, according to a survey co-conducted by the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.hamiltonproject.org/blog/the_covid_19_crisis_has_already_left_too_many_children_hungry_in_america" target="_blank">Hamilton Project</a>, a dramatic rise that demonstrates how far-reaching the effects of the outbreak are.



KEY FACTS



<ul><li>The survey, conducted in late April, asked a representative national sample of mothers whether they had experienced food insecurity, defined as not having enough money to get more food after the food they bought had run out, or as their children not having enough to eat because their families couldn’t afford enough food.</li></ul>



<ul><li>In 2018 the number that said they’d experienced food insecurity was just 15.1%, for comparison, meaning this number has increased 260%.</li></ul>



<ul><li>Similarly, 17.4% of mothers with children under the age of 12 reported they could not afford to keep their children fed as a result of the pandemic, and 3.4% of that group said it was often the case their children were underfed because they could not afford food.</li></ul>



<ul><li>The Hamilton Project’s Future of the Middle Class Initiative Survey of Mothers with Young Children asks respondents questions validated by the USDA from their late April food security questionnaire, according to their <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.hamiltonproject.org/blog/the_covid_19_crisis_has_already_left_too_many_children_hungry_in_america" target="_blank">website</a>.</li></ul>



KEY BACKGROUND



With staggering unemployment and children at home 24/7, parents are responsible for 100% of their children&#8217;s meals, as compared to life pre-pandemic where children were likely provided meats at school, daycare, camp and after-school programs, which <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html#link-ba9024b" target="_blank">may play</a> a significant role in these huge numbers, according to the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html#link-ba9024b" target="_blank">New York Times</a> <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/new-york-times" target="_blank">NYT</a>.  Food insecurity is way up in general: the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey found 21.9% of households with non-elderly adults to report food insecurity in the period from March 25 to April 10 (wth similar findings in a late April survey by COVID Impact), compared to the 2018 rate of just over 11%.



In Congress Democrats and Republicans are now bickering over food stamp benefits. Democrats want to raise benefits by 15% for the duration of the coronavirus crisis, while Republicans think they are fine as is, per the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html#link-ba9024b" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/">Alexandra Sternlic</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/">ht</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

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The Number Of Mothers Reporting Food Insecurity Has Jumped More Than 200% Since Start Of Pandemic

Last year, Bill Gates named his 10 breakthrough technologies for the year. Among the technological developments he outlined were robot dexterity, new-wave nuclear power, customized cancer vaccines and the cow-free burger. It was the first time that the list, usually compiled by MIT Technology Review, was created by a guest editor. It is no wonder that Gates rightly predicted that home computers and the internet would infiltrate much of our lives. Yet, when I went through this list, it was not necessarily universal. Many of these breakthrough technologies made sense through Western lenses. We have to ask, which of these breakthrough technologies will have the most significant impact on the African continent?



Perhaps the most pressing issue for Africa now is agriculture. Climate change has had a devastating impact on the agriculture sector, which is particularly concerning when you consider that most African economies still heavily depend on it. A study by McKinsey &amp; Company found that more than 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is smallholder farmers, and about 23% of sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) comes from agriculture. Yet, increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather events not only disrupt entire industries but reduce food availability and impacts food quality. This, of course, is coupled with the fastest-rising population, which places more strain on resources.



We have already observed in the last few years how devastating a drought can be. South Africa has become a significant food importer, while Kenya and Zimbabwe are on the verge of starvation. This has seen the regional and national economic growth take a severe knock. Yet, as the United Nations put it, “the continent has enormous potential, not only to feed itself and eliminate hunger and food insecurity but also be a major player in global food markets.” So how do we go about this? I would argue that tapping into the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) does not just serve as a way of revitalizing the agricultural sector but also realizing its potential. As the American financier Bernard Baruch once put it: “Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deep into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer.”



I have just bought a farm and have been looking at ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) can make farming more efficient. Farmers can tap into AI to combat disease and pests, which have been made worse by climate change and pesticide use. Drones and other robots equipped with computer vision can collect data points from the farms’ existing crops. If you were to ask me to spell out some breakthrough technologies, many of them would be inextricably linked with the agricultural sector.



For instance, it is estimated that humans would need to plant over 1.2 trillion trees to combat climate change. Here, we could use AI to automate this process.



Airlitix is a South African AI software that is currently being used in drones to automate greenhouse management processes. We could take this a step further. Airlitix can collect temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide data as well as analyse soil and crop health. 



Elsewhere, similar technology has been adopted. The Third Eye project in Kenya uses near-infrared cameras mounted on drones to survey and diagnose the plants for pests and diseases, water stress and nutrient deficiencies. This requires a combination of historical data and the use of AI. Last year, IBM developed an AI-powered app to test the quality of their soil and water on location, in real-time. The AgroPad is a technology that can rapidly perform chemical analysis of water and soil samples. In California, Ceres Imaging has mapped fields using images of farms, which are analysed using AI to ascertain whether crops are getting enough water. This technology helps farmers decide when to plant, water, spray and harvest their crops.



This conversation crops up as we scrutinize what it means to have a green economy. The 4IR does not merely provide tools for efficiency, but it presents a unique opportunity to interrogate how we can transform the industry as our natural environment deteriorates.



To a large extent, we underestimate the importance of the agricultural sector. Yet, without it, we would not have food security, we would see our economies crumble and there would be untold job losses.



-Tshilidzi Marwala

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Op-Ed: How To Be A Major Player In Global Food Markets

After her husband’s death, Popi Zolas abandoned her
corporate career and took on a restaurant franchise, before immersing herself
in the catering and confectionery business.



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As a cost consultant working in the corporate space, Popi
Zolas never thought she would one day be in the catering and baking business.
But when life deals you rude surprises, you make plans to make the dough to
live it down. 



Her husband’s death in a car accident in 1997 resulted in
her inheriting shares in the then popular Something Fishy restaurant in
Johannesburg that her husband franchised.



After his death, she was thrown in the deep end and had to co-manage his business. 



“I worked there for seven years together with a partner and
we did phenomenally well but our visions were different and we had to buy each
other out; he offered me more than [the amount] I was happy offer him. I exited
the group in 2003,” she says.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Local Solutions Can Boost Healthier Food Choices In South Africa (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/health/2019/03/15/local-solutions-can-boost-healthier-food-choices-in-south-africa/" target="_blank">Local Solutions Can Boost Healthier Food Choices In South Africa</a>



&nbsp;Zolas rested for a
while and went into franchise consulting, and then went on to research global eating
trends in 2004. The same year, 180 Degrees Catering &amp; Confectionery was
born. She named the business after the standard temperature used for baking.



“This baby (180 degrees) is a very difficult baby, but it’s
a very rewarding baby in the sense that people who start off as cleaners, end
up in either the confectionery or catering department,” says Zolas. 



It began as a restaurant in Bryanston, north of
Johannesburg, employing 15 people, but has seen some changes over the years. 



The initial idea was to create home-style, nutritionally
balanced meals for families and corporate employees. Part of the concept was
also to make high-end meals that would be convenient.



“I can’t say I was happy being in retail. In 2008, during
the global recession, my intention was to franchise 180 Degrees but that never
happened because banks stopped financing startups. My lease increased, after
almost five years, to R150 ($11) per square meter. I didn’t want to sign a new
lease because the cost was horrendous. They were upgrading the building, and we
thought we have a substantial following of corporate clients, why not retain
those clients and go to a small factory where it’s R29 ($2) per square meter.” 



<ul class="wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="926" height="615" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi2.png.png" alt="" data-id="40670" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=40670" class="wp-image-40670" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi2.png.png 926w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi2.png-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi2.png-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi2.png-768x510.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 926px) 100vw, 926px" /><figcaption> Popi Zolas&#8217; kitchen. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla </figcaption></figure></li></ul>



Unfortunately, the following year, Zolas had to retrench
seven staff members but was able to retain the rest. 



“We had retrenched because we had a limited number of
corporate customers and we were going to service that group of customers with
the intention of growth,” she says.&nbsp; 



That proved to be a successful strategy as she now employs
79 people at a factory in Wynberg, 12kms from their former Bryanston address.



When they moved into the factory, the business focused
solely on corporate catering where food was being delivered to corporates; and
business was steadily growing through word-of-mouth.



“If your product is not good, not wholesome, not tasty or without good presentation, you will never succeed, despite the marketing. And word-of-mouth is the most important thing in this industry.”



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Foodies With A Drive For Business (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2018/10/22/the-foodies-with-a-drive-for-business/" target="_blank">The Foodies With A Drive For Business</a>



Zolas elaborates on her recipe for success. 



“I believe the product should speak for itself, customer
service should be exceptionally important because our product is a very
high-end product. We don’t use preservatives, we don’t use stabilizers and we
don’t use enhancers in our products. We use real cream cheese, real butter, our
product is a real wholesome creation, and we don’t substitute, I’m very
fanatical about detail. We stand out because of that.



&nbsp;“Now we are growing a
very huge private customer base; either they collect or we have it delivered,
and that started almost immediately because they see us delivering to
corporates and would call and enquire for private functions and that is the
spinoff from the corporate work that we do,” Zolas says.



The business reaches the far corners of Gauteng in South
Africa. Zolas supplies to coffee shops, hotels, restaurants and caterers who
are either short-staffed to produce a particular product or if their orders are
too high. 



“I keep mentioning growth because I never expected to be
where we are now when we moved into this factory. I thought when I reached R1
million ($71,645) the business would be wow, and then you reach it and you
think ‘what now’, and then it’s R1.5 million ($107,478) and you watch those
figures every day and you’re excited and you’re thinking, ‘will I get to R2
million ($143,304)’ and then its ‘nah, not R2 million’. Now, the turnover is
R3.5 million ($250,782). When I started in Bryanston, I was making around
R300,000 ($21,495).” 



Innocentia Malandisa, who has been working with the company
for 15 years, is the only person Zolas trusts with quality control in the
catering department. 



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="927" height="615" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi3.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-40671" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi3.png.png 927w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi3.png-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi3.png-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/popi3.png-768x510.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 927px) 100vw, 927px" /><figcaption> Popi Zolas in her kitchen. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla </figcaption></figure>



“My child was six months when I started, this year she is
turning 15. I have worked with Popi ever since and I don’t have complaints.
We’ve had hiccups, up and downs, on and offs but we keep on going. I am the
chef here and I’ve been chopping onions ever since [I started], even today and
I’m enjoying it,” Malandisa says. 



Because of the demands of her business, Zolas, 56, does not
enjoy much of a social life, but her customers and staff such as Malandisa have
more than filled in to become good friends. 



There seems to be enough good food and goodwill going around.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The dos and don&#8217;ts of franchising 



Ulrich Joubert, an independent economist in South Africa, says franchising has its benefits but there are complexities that businesses must consider. 



“If you talk about franchisers, it gives people support and
provides structure to people who are starting in business. We’ve seen in the
past where people lose their jobs and have to do something to stay alive and
survive. And so, many people go into franchise and if they have good support,
then it helps become successful.” 



He avers though that it’s hard work, and you have to be
careful about how you do things to provide quality products customers will come
back for time and again. 



“Quality is of utmost importance and, therefore, skills
development, and often if you want to break into the corporate environment, it
takes a lot of time and effort to get into those environments.”

Popi1

This caterer’s recipe for success

Hungry in London with a stomach dreaming of home? From the smoky to the sensory, the city offers distinct African culinary encounters.

The unfussy algorithm of a well-known review website has decided there are 105 ‘African’ restaurants in London. Search for ‘European’ restaurants, and you’ll discover 2,654 – now your gut might be telling you something is amiss in the capital’s gigantic foodscape.
‘European food’ seems rather a strange and empty phrase (bouillabaisse and chips, anyone?), but an equivalent suspicion of categorization seems not to apply to dishes from Africa, a continent boasting 54 countries to Europe’s 50. London may indeed be aggressively cosmopolitan, but it might be a while before this ravenous city can really consider itself fully ‘woke’.
Thankfully, word-of-mouth is still a solidly reliable guide to the thousands of eateries in the city, so let this small slice of recommended eats from the African continent – Ghanaian, Senegalese and South African – serve as a modest appetizer, should you find yourself hungry in London with a stomach dreaming of home.
“For me, it should be seamless – the tradition is in the flavor profile of the dish,” says Zoe Adjonyoh, author of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, of the challenge of reinventing Ghanaian flavors for a new audience.
“The reinterpreting is in the creativity of how to rebuild the dish through different cooking methods, or blending its inherent ingredients in new ways.” Try her ‘Suya Cauliflower Florets’, featuring the smoky notes of the Nigerian and Ghanaian suya spice blend, by way of tasty example.
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2018/10/22/the-foodies-with-a-drive-for-business/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Foodies With A Drive For Business</a>
Through her increasingly popular pop-ups and residencies, Adjonyoh tries to avoid “preaching or teaching” what Ghanaian food should or shouldn’t be.
“I’m highlighting what’s possible, and giving people the motivation to do more with these amazing flavors and ingredients to maximize their taste and longevity,” she says. The cookbook features “traditional Ghanaian recipes remixed for the modern kitchen”.

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“I’m very keen to champion and promote the next generation of female chefs cooking cuisines from across Africa,” she says. “I see it as part of my challenge and responsibility to keep encouraging them to fall in love with their heritage again through food, and tell their own cultural stories – to be the masters and makers of this food revolution.”
A short bus ride through East London brings us to Little Baobab, a monthly food and music pop-up above a vibrant corner grocery in Hackney. It’s a bright late afternoon, and Senegalese chef Khadim Mbamba is making his ‘Lamb Mafe’ – lamb in a tomato and peanut sauce (a traditional base sauce in Senegal), with rice and salad. It is creamy and tangy-sweet; hearty, but fresh on the palate. He makes me a gift of a home-made chilli paste that celebrates the spice’s medicinal punch but marries perfectly with the roasted umami of the nut gravy.
The events are themselves a marriage of music and food; guests share starters, and then choose from ‘Thiebou Dienne’ (fish casserole), ‘Chicken Yassa’ (chicken with onions and olives), ‘Lamb Mafe’, or ‘Vegetarian Thiou’ (tomato-based vegetable stew). Mbamba’s band – he plays bass – rounds out the sensory smorgasbord while the guests tuck in. It’s an experience close to Mbamba’s heart, full of the joy of community so integral to the Senegalese culinary encounter.
“There is a lot of soul in our food,” he says. “The love you have, making the dish – when people eat that dish, they will feel that love.” Little Baobab began life as a restaurant, with live music every night, but Mbamba and his team are now focussed on pop-ups and catering (especially for weddings).
Westward now towards the financial center, and Etienne Pansegrauw’s Hammer &amp; Tongs braai restaurant in Farringdon. Braai dishes seem perfectly suited to British culture: the locals crave an evolved barbecue civilization of their own, but wage constant war with a climate that seems hell-bent on wrecking any carefully-planned Sunday afternoon cook-out. What better, then, than letting a South African do it all for you?
Pansegrauw, from South Africa’s Eastern Cape, has invested in state-of-the-art extractors that allow chef Rodrigo Navarro to prepare a succulent array of locally-sourced fresh meats, vegetables and seafood on fires fed with sickle bush wood imported from Namibia.
This elevates the food to much more than barbecue (indeed, South Africans might argue that braai and barbecue are not the same thing at all; that the braai is closer to something like a cultural state of mind). ‘Mutton Chops in Cape Malay Curry’ are tender and sweetly charred; ‘Prawns with Lime Salt’ are juicy and moreish; and ‘Pork Belly with Apple Cider Compote’ gains most from the sickle bush smoke, the layers of pork fat richly infused with the fragrant nuttiness of the wood. The surprise star of the menu, though, is the ‘Honey Fried Carrots with Chilli’ – the plump, crunchy carrots are cooked in honey before being finished on the grill, giving them a caramelized meatiness equal in textural complexity to anything fish or flesh. These are the big, bold flavors of the camp fire, but prepared with panache and an attention to the subtle combinations of flavor and aroma that are the hallmark of great grill cooking.
“If you go back five years, even, if you had opened up a wood fire place, I don’t think that many people would have gone,” says Pansegrauw. “So the timing has been important. I wanted to see if British people would be receptive to this kind of food; that’s why I opened up in an area near the city, rather than South West London for example, which has a large South African community. For every group of 20 Brits that come, there’s usually one South African that drags them here! But then they all come back.”
Our final destination is two miles west, but a galaxy away. Ikoyi is the first ‘African’ restaurant in London to have earned a coveted Michelin star, but the continental label seems even more incongruous here – the irony is that the Ikoyi concept plays with the African association as readily as it flirts with the aesthetics of costume design, science fiction and pop art. This thrilling challenge to expectations is almost an affront – one isn’t completely sure if the menu, and the intensity of its creators, Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale, isn’t just some bizarre but delicious practical joke (chef Chan likens his food in the press pack to the paintings of Mark Rothko, a correlation that some will think pretentious &#8211; I found it endearingly ballsy and appropriate).
The ‘Plantain, Raspberry &amp; Smoked Scotch Bonnet’ starter is like something from an Eiko Ishioka fantasy costume sketch: there is a magenta slash of plantain, encrusted with a tart-sour raspberry salt, and a saffron-yellow quenelle of citrusy chilli mayonnaise. The plantain is dense and sugary, the raspberry salt reminiscent of a child’s fizzing candy powder, but with a bass note from the emulsion of Scotch Bonnet warmth. It’s odd, exhilarating and a little bit Star Trek – you might be served this if you were an alien ambassador at a private function on the USS Enterprise.
“The dishes have to lure you in,” says Chan. “You have to look at the dish and think – I want to destroy that! So, for example, a pork chop that looks more like a pig than the animal did – a cartoon version of itself. It’s about aesthetics and deliciousness, but unified. This dish is your kill, your prize!”
<div id="attachment_37673" style="width: 750px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37673" class="wp-image-37673 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen.jpg" alt="" width="740" height="987" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-768x1024.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />Ikoyi Jeremy and Iré. Photo by P.A Jorgensen</div>
Childhood friends Chan and Hassan-Odukale were inspired to open the restaurant by a visit to Lagos (Chan is from the north-west of England, Hassan-Odukale is Nigerian-born), but Chan insists that these are “purposely not Nigerian dishes. They have to be completely innovative. That’s the rule”.
The ‘Smoked Jollof Rice’ is a sensuous love song to the crab – the perfect al dente rice has been cooked in a crab broth, and is finished with an unctuous crab cream; the entire crustacean is used in the preparation. It’s sophisticated comfort food, demonstrating Chan’s instinctive understanding that juxtapositions tradition and experimentation at the core of everything good emerging from 21st century multiculturalism.
“The dishes have to be driven by a creative interpretation of the ingredients,” says Chan, in a suitably enigmatic coda to a week of great eating from Africa. “It’s about a primal connection with the guest. Everything is stripped of any preconceptions.”
&#8211; By Alastair Haggar

Khadim-Mbamba-from-Little-Baobab

Taking A Bite Out Of Africa

Durban’s farmers markets are a magnet for consumers and small businesses alike, boosting the informal economy in the sunny South African city.

Be it the cosy market at Umhlanga or the expansive variety market at Shongweni, the coastal city of Durban in South Africa seems to be the sunny hub for farmers markets and small business owners setting up impromptu trading venues.
Within minutes of arriving at the Umhlanga Farmers Market, it’s easy to see why it attracts a steady stream of shoppers, despite the cold, penetrating drizzle on a Durban morning. There’s a good selection of fresh produce and specialty foods, the vibe is lively and cheerful even sans music or entertainment, and traders offer friendly, personalized attention. It helps that the market is centrally located and in the open air, fringed on one side by coastal dune forest. A woman trading home-baked date muffins and peach tarts chats away as she holds down a tent flap until the wind fades long enough for her to tie it down, and her customers happily banter on until she’s able to serve them. Dogs drag their owners across the clearing to greet other dogs. And everything on display looks oven-fresh and appealing.
“There’s a great variety of food we wouldn’t normally get in supermarkets – like the special cheeses or the vegan cupcakes,” says the market’s owner Alexa McWilliams.
<blockquote>“These are traders who are working from home and have a talent.”</blockquote>
She took ownership of the market several years ago and maintains its “charismatic, informal feel” because she considers it an important platform for small businesses. She explains that the market is a success because of its regular traders. “We see some traders come and go because they expect to buy a Ferrari after one morning, but it’s the regular traders who have their regular customers. Consistency is the most important thing for a market”.
Kirsten Hughes, who trades fresh farm butter and specialty cheeses, relies almost entirely on markets for her income.
“Markets appeal to me because of the freedom – there’s a lot of work with sourcing the products but it’s not a nine-to-five job,” she says, while cutting a slab of a special artisanal wash-dried cheese. “I have regular customers, and they can’t get my products easily.” Her main trade is at Shongweni, with a significant proportion of it at Umhlanga.
The latter market’s newest trader, Houda Abiet, began to trade her homemade Mediterranean foods here only a few weeks back, as a marketing exercise. “It’s very interesting to see what people like and don’t like, and they’re inquisitive because they don’t know all my products. I always tell them – just taste, you don’t have to buy.”
McWilliams herself started her marinated olive business at this market. She says: “Markets worked better because it’s a niche product [I sell] – I make it by hand and I have a passion for it.” She grew her business over the years and now has a full-time shop, Olive-A-Twist in Ballito, but does not think she would have got to that level of sales if it were not for the markets.
“The markets will give beginners with a great idea a phenomenal platform,” she says.
“You get a diversity of people from all over, so it’s also a great testing ground. I would recommend it to anyone.”
Across the city, the Westville Farmers Market enjoys a steady flow of customers on Thursday mornings. Traders set up shop at the Jimmy Bellows Sports Field, alongside a protected riverine forest, with expansive trees shading their stalls. It’s a friendly space, and traders and shoppers are casually familiar with each other.
Here, there are only seven or eight stalls selling vegetables, eggs, home-baked cakes, honey and biltong. Clint Govender, owner of the market, trades organically-grown vegetables, eggs, and homemade biryani. It’s a family business, with his wife supplying the biryani, and the vegetables sourced from his uncle’s farm.
“Customers are looking here for the quality and the freshness, especially the eggs,” Govender says. “And we’re 40% cheaper than the shops.”
The market is about 20 years old, and several stallholders and shoppers refer to its “better days”, when there were many more traders and a wider variety of products.
Govender explains that over the years, many of the old stallholders passed away or relocated, and he hasn’t had success attracting new businesses.
“The traders don’t always understand that it takes time to build their clientele. Jaco, over there, has been here two years, but it took him maybe six months to build up his client base, and now it’s worth his while to come every week.”
Jaco Buyleveld sells plants and provides a blade-sharpening service. He keeps his business small by choice, operating only at the Westville and Umhlanga markets. Westville’s customers seem to be mainly pensioners dropping by in between their grandchildren’s school rounds, and Buyleveld speculates that this is because most of the younger residents are working outside of the area. He is not optimistic about the future of the market, saying, “Unless you get a younger customer base, the market is doomed.”
A few kilometers up the hill, also on Thursday mornings, the St. Agnes Fresh Produce Market is noticeably devoid of customers. It’s well-situated at a major intersection, with its stalls looking out onto the St. Agnes church’s gardens. There’s a better variety here than at Westville, but it feels like the traders are here for reasons other than hard cash.
Although he hasn’t made a sale yet today, John Phiri says that this market is worth his time for building a longer-term client base through orders. He trades leather products that he makes – caps, belts, wallets – here and at Umhlanga market as well as at Golden Hours, Bluff, and Durban’s craft/flea markets. Phiri’s income is mainly from these markets.
<div id="attachment_37654" style="width: 750px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37654" class="wp-image-37654 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-1024x615.jpg" alt="" width="740" height="444" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-1024x615.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-300x180.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-600x360.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-768x461.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-1000x600.jpg 1000w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-590x354.jpg 590w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams-400x240.jpg 400w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Umhlanga-Farmers-Market-by-Alexa-McWilliams.jpg 1241w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />Umhlanga Farmers Market. Photo by Alexa McWilliams</div>
He says: “Since I started my business, I’m enjoying the markets – I do enjoy talking to the customers. For sales, I prefer Bluff and Golden Hours. Flea markets are best because we expect thousands of people and we sell well.”
Sidney Oerter is the only trader who reports good sales here today. He trades specialty cheeses he sources from around South Africa, with the occasional import. He started his business a few months ago, and although he supplies a few restaurants, his main customer base is at the markets – Litchi Orchard, I Heart, and the brand-new Drummond Farmers Market. He explains: “Markets are an easy way to get into sales. We want to expand the business, maybe offer monthly hampers, but the markets are our entry point.”
Georgina Erasmus, who trades honey, eggs, organic coffee, and Madagascan bags, at a number of different markets, says that she will normally trial a new market for six to eight weeks before deciding whether to come back, although she’s been coming to St. Agnes since it started a year ago despite poor trade because, “it gets me out of the house and we love the church, and we also like some of the people who come here”. Her main trade is at Shongweni and she says confidently: “If you’re not selling at Shongweni, then there’s something wrong with your product.”
The line of traffic winding along the hills west of Durban every Saturday morning is testament to the popularity of Shongweni Farmers Market. Its customer base is around 4,500 on regular weeks, swelling considerably during the holidays.
Owner Christine Standeaven believes that it’s the variety on offer that makes it worthwhile for people across the age and income range to make the trek across the city. There’s also food, crafts, entertainment, as well as areas for relaxing.
“People come here to find items that are unique, and they love supporting people who are making a living for themselves,” says Standeaven. “They might get things cheaper in the stores, but they’ll rather come to a crafter and take the time to look for a special gift.”
She explains that the market started as a space where local farmers could sell directly to the public, with a bit of breakfast food, but she incorporated crafts and expanded the food section after five years when she found that they weren’t increasing their customer base. The intake doubled at that point. Just over two years ago, the market moved to its current location, with Standeaven building undercover stalls for every trader and concrete walkways to keep feet mud-free when it rained.
As she speaks, it becomes obvious that the market is successful because of her high sensitivity to the needs of both her traders and customers.
She says: “I can walk 15 to 16 kilometers on a Saturday morning. I greet every single stallholder, I look at what people are bringing in, and I check everything.” For example, Standeaven makes sure that catering equipment is clean on arrival, food vendors are constantly washing their hands, and there is cold storage for meat products. She has a team of cleaners speedily picking up litter and cleaning up after children and dog accidents.
And on the product side, she keeps an eye on trends and fashions, so that she can make sure that there are traders who can cater for the full variety of customers.
Standeaven says that about two thirds of Shongweni’s stallholders rely only on markets for their income. “I watch what people are bringing out of the market, and I like to see them carrying bags because I know the stallholders are happy. I need to create the best platform for my stallholders to want to stay in the market, so that I have an amazing outing for the people who are coming to buy at the market. And I want it like that every week.”
The I Heart Market in central Durban is also proving to be a strong platform for small businesses. It’s an arts and crafts market at the Moses Mabhida Stadium on the first Saturday of each month.
The market itself is a success story, having begun with 12 stalls outside the St Mary’s Church Hall in Windermere in 2008, and growing rapidly to 120 or so traders at its current location.
Says owner Anna Savage: “We knew a lot of creative people who were doing really interesting work – ceramicists, fashion designers, jewelry designers – but they didn’t have anywhere to sell. So the idea was to put together a market where for a small fee you could set up a mini shop, and start to build your customer base.”
<div id="attachment_37653" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37653" class="wp-image-37653 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IHeart-AnnaSavage-by-Erin-Wolfsohn-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IHeart-AnnaSavage-by-Erin-Wolfsohn-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IHeart-AnnaSavage-by-Erin-Wolfsohn-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IHeart-AnnaSavage-by-Erin-Wolfsohn-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IHeart-AnnaSavage-by-Erin-Wolfsohn-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IHeart-AnnaSavage-by-Erin-Wolfsohn-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IHeart-AnnaSavage-by-Erin-Wolfsohn.jpg 1365w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />I Heart&#8217;s Anna Savage</div>
Savage curates the market strictly: “It’s about maintaining a standard of quality of product, and also a particular type of aesthetic. We accept only locally-produced products, but we also wanted products that are exceptional – things that are dynamic and interesting, that are ahead of the trends, but also that are viable, with appeal for a larger public and in the right price range.”
The market’s customer base is about 4,500, and collective sales for all traders average R460,000 ($32,500) at each market.
For about a quarter of the traders, sales at I Heart account for over 60% of their monthly income.
Duduzile Ngubane, a resident trader, says that it was through I Heart and other markets that she was able to grow her fashion business, which started as a hobby. Although she has a full-time shop, markets still account for about 40% of her income. Her line of fashionwear, Du Confidence, is made for “women who are confident”, as she says proudly. The range is casual and formal plus-size modernwear.
She explains: “I am bold, bright, feminine, and I’m a warm woman, so the work I do is mostly in bright colors. It’s a confident woman who can wear bright colors.”
Just recently, demand has grown enough for her to be able to focus on her business full-time.
Says Savage: “I do really think that by providing this platform, the market inspired people who wanted to do something different from their day jobs. It’s providing a place for small businesses to launch, and it makes me really excited when I see people doing well.”
&#8211; Rehana Dada

I-heart-Fresh-Box-by-Erin-Wolfsohn

Crafts  And Camaraderie On The Coast

Two taxi commuters who went on to become friends and tenacious business partners selling gourmet cuisine out of a food truck.

Look right, look left. You may well be sitting next to your future business partner.
That’s what happened to Hezron Louw, the Johannesburg-based co-founder of Sumting Fresh, on one of his taxi commutes years ago, and one that set him off on another journey altogether in a food truck.
“I met this guy in the taxi. And he was reading a magazine about cakes and we started talking about cakes. And every day for about two and half years, we would meet in the same taxi line and we would talk about food,” recounts Louw, when we meet him at Grant Avenue, a trendy street in the garden suburb of Norwood in Johannesburg.
This is where Sumting Fresh is rustling up and selling taste. The gourmet food company also sells out of a food truck at Johannesburg’s vibrant food markets.
The guy Louw met in the taxi, chef Andrew Leeuw, would go on to found Sumting Fresh with him in 2012. But before that, the friends-turned-business partners had hurdles and hiccups to overcome.
“We had 12 years apart in between before we saw each other again,” says Louw, the self-taught chef and media personality.
Louw and Leeuw grew up in the suburb of Ennerdale four blocks from each other but never met until the day destiny connected them at the taxi rank.
<div id="attachment_37499" style="width: 693px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37499" class="wp-image-37499 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hezron-297-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="683" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hezron-297-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hezron-297-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hezron-297-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hezron-297-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hezron-297-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Hezron-297.jpg 1366w" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" />Hezron Louw; the background illustration has co-founder Andrew Leew on the right.</div>
They were students at the time – Louw was studying for a BCom in accounting while Leeuw was studying to become a chef.
Though Louw dropped out of his course to work in the banking sector, Leeuw completed his studies and worked at resorts.
The common ground in their friendship was their deep, abiding love for food.
“One day, I was driving down the road with my brother and I see Andrew. I shout ‘hey my guy’, he shouts ‘hey my guy’. We had forgotten each other’s names,” he says.
They went to have a beer and three months later, Sumting Fresh was born with merely no capital.
“We had a trailer and we would use my brother’s VW Golf to pull it… We were situated at Becker Street in Midrand for about two years,” says Louw.
Armed with no market research, the risk-takers parked their vehicle there in the hope of one day luring enough clients and becoming successful.
Besides their love for gastronomy, all they had between them was R20,000 ($1, 366) and some pots and pans they received from family.
Reality kicked in soon after.
“Yho! It was dismal,” exclaims Louw.
They were selling lunch to middle-income employees for R35 &#8211; R50 ($2 &#8211; $3) per meal at the time, and their cost price was also as much. They weren’t making any profit.
“Here we were out on the streets selling expensive food at low prices. Our business was a complete loss. Sometimes we would split R175 ($12),” says Louw, reminiscing the cash-strapped days.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2018/10/18/no-wasted-opportunities-for-swazi-entrepreneur/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: No Wasted Opportunities For Swazi Entrepreneur</a>
Fortunately, they had a support system at home including family members and partners.
“I was literally a working poor person. I was extremely poor!” says Louw.
Things got worse. Both co-founders had children and families to look after.
“The business was on its knees, we couldn’t afford milk, nappies [for the children]; we just couldn’t afford anything.”
But the ambition to succeed was strong.
“What was very fortunate was Andrew and I are very optimistic people. We always knew we wanted Sumting Fresh to work. Even though the situation was depressing and hard, when he was down, I would pick him up, when I was down, he would pick me up,” says Louw.
As they leaned on each other, they learned determination.
<blockquote>“The main reason our business is still around is persistence. We would knock on doors and we would insist on getting customers.</blockquote>
“What a lot of entrepreneurs always miss out on is that they always paint the perfect picture [of their business]. They go out and tell how great things are and how great their businesses are. Then people [potential investors] think ‘why do you need my help’?” says Louw.
Their fortunes changed after an encounter with South African entrepreneur Miles Kubheka, the founder of Vuyo’s selling modern African cuisine.
“He used to have a restaurant in Braamfontein. He was driving past, and tasted our chicken wings,” says Louw.
Kubheka was impressed and approached them to work for him. They kept declining.
“We would say ‘no, we can’t’, we are living our dream. He came every day for three months and offered us a job and money so we would quit Sumting Fresh… But this one day, we were so broke we couldn’t anymore,” says Louw.
They shut the trailer and became employees.
“It was great, there was fire and they would tell us at 1 o’clock, it’s lunchtime.”
It took just three days for them to quit because the feeling of working for someone was “strange”.
This time, their return to business would change their financial fortunes.
“Now you are charged up and you see what is possible… [working for Vuyo’s] was a motivation to push us,” he says. The pair continued to work for Kubheka at Fourways Farmers Market on Sundays, until the idea came to also sell on their own at the food market.
It took three months until they received approval to sell their fried chicken strips with cheese. They were soon shoveling money with a bucket yet it had a hole in it.
They made money at the market and lost it all at Becker’s Street during the week, until they decided to close the store. But this was the beginning of new ideas and business opportunities. They expanded to the Neighbourgoods Market, where they met customers from all spheres of life.
“Where we are from, where we started and what we planned for our business is completely different. We thought we would be street food giants. It took us so long to open our eyes and see that,” says Louw.
They took on corporate clients and yet again made the mistake of expanding when not ready.
<blockquote>“Chasing the money can cost you money… that is one thing we need to learn as entrepreneurs. Not every customer is your customer,” he says.</blockquote>
Sumting Fresh finally found its niche.
It now turns over R6 million ($410,033) annually compared to the R600 ($41) monthly profit seven years ago.
They have parked their food trailers at festivals such as the Bushfire Festival in Swaziland, the OppiKoppi music festival in South Africa, and cater for private parties and corporate companies, in addition to running the restaurant in Johannesburg.
Louw is currently one of the judges for the Standard Bank campaign, My Fearless Next, encouraging budding entrepreneurs to turn their side hustles into their main businesses.
The founders of Sumting Fresh have shown how good company and good food can eventually spice up the bottom line.

Hezron-326

The Foodies With A Drive For Business

Picture this: remote rural Africa, where communities assiduously farm vast stretches of arable land not knowing anything about digital technology or drones that can transform their lives.
Now picture this: forward-thinking innovators and entrepreneurs who swap the city for the village and lend these communities the tech and savvy to change farming – and their fortunes – forever.
Agriculture, the mainstay of Africa’s informal economies, needs a facelift, and some new faces to talk tech to power. Agri-tech is the buzzword, and we profile three innovators spearheading change in their communities. They grew up on these farms, and knowing their earth best, have created the technology they need, in turn revolutionizing agriculture, from the little corners of Africa.
<h4>‘Clarity From Above’ 
James Paterson, South Africa</h4>
<div id="attachment_36233" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36233" class="size-medium wp-image-36233" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/James-Paterson-CEO.jpg 1181w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />James Paterson. Photo supplied.</div>
An unidentified flying object hovers over a 150-hectare orange farm in a small town called Clanwilliam in the Western Cape Province of South Africa.
It’s the first time James Paterson is testing his homemade drone. The object flies over the mountainous terrain offering a bird’s eye view, then singles out a tree with stunted growth. The object detects that the tree is not receiving enough water.
The object looks like a prop out of the Transformers movie series. It has eyes too – a camera lens – to monitor what’s happening on the ground. Paterson, 29, controls this propeller-enhanced technology using a controller. He is the co-founder and CEO of Aerobotics, a company that interprets satellite and aerial drone analytics to enable farmers.
He calls it “clarity from above”.
The drone space in Africa has significantly developed over the years, and the view from below has certainly changed too. In Rwanda, drones are a common sight, famously used to deliver blood and medical supplies to remote areas, and here in this small South African farm, it’s being used to improve the way we grow food.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2018/05/02/drones-by-africa-for-africa/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Drones By Africa, For Africa</a>
Aerobotics’ core mandate is to provide data on tree crops, enabling farmers with information on disease, pests and water usage. They are able to tell the farmers if a tree lacks nutrition and what it needs.
“Find one small thing that is going to improve the farmers’ life and then focus on that,” says Paterson.
“Instead of just giving the farmer a picture or a map, we give him exactly what’s going on with the tree and we can track that over time.”
He believes this would be useful in areas such as Cape Town with the ongoing water crisis.
He co-founded the company with Benji Meltzer in 2014 after they built drones in Paterson’s garage. Paterson, who grew up on a fruit farm, had always loved aeronautics. Meltzer is also the Chief Technology Officer of Aerobotics.
Now, he is able to merge farming and tech into something he enjoys doing on a daily basis; running an aeronautical company providing farm analytical services.
<blockquote>“Some farmers… like the older way of doing things.”</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_36240" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36240" class="size-medium wp-image-36240" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/farmer-using-Aerobotics-Flight-Planner-app-for-DJI-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/farmer-using-Aerobotics-Flight-Planner-app-for-DJI-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/farmer-using-Aerobotics-Flight-Planner-app-for-DJI-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/farmer-using-Aerobotics-Flight-Planner-app-for-DJI-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/farmer-using-Aerobotics-Flight-Planner-app-for-DJI-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/farmer-using-Aerobotics-Flight-Planner-app-for-DJI.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Aerobotics interprets satelitte and aerial drone analytics to help farmers.</div>
But running the company hasn’t always been easy. Apart from competing with drone companies providing similar services, their biggest challenge has been trying to convince farmers to use their product.
“Some farmers… like the older way of doing things,” says Paterson.
“But even then, after we have met with them and we show them what that can do, they can really understand this is something that can help them on the farm.”
Currently, they have over 200 clients in countries such as the United States, Russia and South Africa.
Paterson has been one of the few to benefit from drone innovation in agriculture. He says he and the team were the only South African startups amongst 24 companies around the world to be part of Google’s Launchpad Accelerator in San Francisco early this year.
They have also secured an R8 million ($663,000) fund from two venture capital firms who Paterson says saw the benefit of their software for farmers. They are currently undergoing a new round of funding.
Aerobotics’ Chief Financial Officer, Timothy Willis, believes that technology in farming can assist in better risk mitigation and enhancing efficiencies around yields.
“I think those two things together will add to making a more efficient agricultural sector in Africa,” he says.
Five years from now, Paterson predicts drones will become more autonomous.
“In the future, you won’t be concerned about the drone, it will just do all the work for you.”
<h4>Smart Farming 
Ndubuisi Ekekwe, Abia State, Nigeria</h4>
<div id="attachment_36235" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36235" class="size-medium wp-image-36235" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NdubuisiEkekwe_IMG_82841-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NdubuisiEkekwe_IMG_82841-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NdubuisiEkekwe_IMG_82841-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NdubuisiEkekwe_IMG_82841-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NdubuisiEkekwe_IMG_82841-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NdubuisiEkekwe_IMG_82841-682x1024.jpg 682w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/NdubuisiEkekwe_IMG_82841.jpg 1181w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Ndubuisi Ekekwe. Photo supplied.</div>
From a farm in the Abia State of Nigeria, Dr Ndubuisi Ekekwe talks to us about a table.
Not just any table, but a small square-shaped table resting on one leg, which actually is “an electronic farm diary” that records and collects crucial information for farmers.
Ekekwe calls it Zenvus, which he created in 2011. It collects data on the soil’s pH, moisture and temperature, and records the sun’s intensity and humidity in the air. An inbuilt solar panel charges it.
The device is his contribution to smart farming. It wirelessly transmits the recorded data to a cloud server from which farmers access it on a mobile app and get real-time data.
“2020 to 2030 will be the decade of agri-tech,” Ekekwe tells FORBES AFRICA.
Zenvus services corporates, and have supplied to 500,000 farming entities. He says it’s currently in a partnership with the government of Cross River State in Nigeria, as well as Abia State.
Ekekwe says he has been approached by a number of international companies wanting to cash in on Zenvus. However, he has been reluctant to sell it.
“Someone wanted to buy Zenvus for $5 million five years ago. I wouldn’t even sell it for $15 million, just to tell you the kind of value it has,” he says.
For Ekekwe, it’s more important to service farmers. To date, he prides himself in having the largest farmers’ cooperative in Africa.
<blockquote>“I wouldn’t even sell it for $15 million.”</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_36239" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36239" class="size-medium wp-image-36239" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Field-Photos-of-Both-Devices-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Field-Photos-of-Both-Devices-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Field-Photos-of-Both-Devices-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Field-Photos-of-Both-Devices-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Field-Photos-of-Both-Devices-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Field-Photos-of-Both-Devices.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Zenvus collects crucial data for farmers in Nigeria.</div>
Ekekwe grew up as a farm boy in a village called Ovim in Abia State. Growing up, he received distinctions throughout his high school year and went on to acquire an engineering degree, four master’s degrees, two doctorates in management and microelectronics, as also a medical robotics degree from the United States.
He chose to move back and stay on in his village.
Ovim is known for the Ajonkwu festival when the Igbo community gather to celebrate the harvesting season.
According to Ekekwe, farmers rely on the moon to obtain a greater yield. As a result, tech for farming isn’t something a lot of people in his community are open to.
“Farmers are not literate and that is why we are not selling tech to them, we are selling the service,” he says.
According to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), 65% of Africa’s labor force is engaged in agriculture. Despite this, agricultural productivity on the African continent still lags behind significantly compared to other continents. AGRA suggests that farming only accounts for 32% of the continent’s GDP. Africa therefore does not reap the benefits of agriculture.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/politics/2017/06/05/agriculture-behind-africas-health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Agriculture Behind Africa’s Health</a>
Ekekwe says the future of Africa is farming. He believes the convergence of tech and agriculture will result in more people wanting a piece of the pie of agri-tech startups and open up more opportunities for Africans across the continent.
<h4>‘Uber For Farmers’ 
Brian Bosire, Kisii, Kenya</h4>
<div id="attachment_36237" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36237" class="wp-image-36237 size-medium" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RS16164_DSC_17101-300x181.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="181" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RS16164_DSC_17101-300x181.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RS16164_DSC_17101-600x361.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RS16164_DSC_17101-768x462.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RS16164_DSC_17101-1024x617.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/RS16164_DSC_17101.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Brian Bosire. Photo supplied.</div>
On a farm in southwestern Kenya, in the small town of Kisii, a field agent reads data off a yellow square-shaped monitor, which has wires running into a smaller device connecting to the soil. It takes him about five minutes to read data regarding the soil’s PH, water levels, and disease and pests found on it. In almost two minutes, the data is sent to the farmer.
The field worker’s job is done and he looks at his phone to find his next requested farm match.
The device that has helped him is named UjuziKilimo, which is Swahili for ‘knowledge farming’. Its founder, 24-year-old Brian Bosire, calls it “an Uber service for farmers”, and this on a farm that even Uber might find difficult to access.
The field worker travels to the nearest farmer who has requested his services. This kind of smart farming service costs the Kenyan farmer about $20.
Bosire had always wanted to become a key contributor to Kenya’s agricultural industry. He grew up in Kisii, a town known for its highlands and wet weather – favorable climate for farming. Frustrated by the lethargic technological growth in the agricultural space in his town, he sought to create something innovative that would improve the yields for the farmers of Kisii.
“We aren’t selling tech, we are selling the solutions,” he tells FORBES AFRICA.
Bosire says what he tries to do is become as close to the farmer as possible. As a result, he and his team target small-scale farmers and read data on vegetable crops, maize being one of them. The UjuziKilimo can read data from about five to 10 acres of land. Farmers can request data on their farms by simply sending an SMS so even farmers with the most basic cellular devices can benefit.
<blockquote>“We aren’t selling tech, we are selling the solutions.”</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_36238" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36238" class="size-medium wp-image-36238" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Ujuzi-Kit-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Ujuzi-Kit-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Ujuzi-Kit-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Ujuzi-Kit-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Ujuzi-Kit-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Ujuzi-Kit.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />UjuziKilimo helps improve yields.</div>
When Bosire moved to the big city of Nairobi to study, he took advantage of every opportunity to pursue his dreams as an entrepreneur. To date, he has founded three companies, all operating in the tech innovation space, UjuziKilimo one of them. 
It’s old hat that Kenya, the country which pioneered M-Pesa as one of Africa’s leading startups, is home to a lot more players in the tech space. But Bosire says his business is different.
Earlier this year, his other innovation company, HydroIQ, won the Startup of the Year Africa 2018 award. Slightly linked to agri-tech, it’s a virtual water network operator which connects water utility companies and water consumers through an online platform. It allows for mobile money payments, data analytics, leakage detections and water use and consumption through sensors that relay information.
All this leads one to believe that the future face of farming in Africa is young.
Bosire hopes UjuziKilimo can grow to reach from 10,000 farmers to over 50,000.
“We want to become the largest data center of agriculture analytics in Africa,” he says. Future plans include launching UjuziKilimo in the United Kingdom under the name ‘Soil Pal’.
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Green Combine harvesting small path of wheat

‘2020 to 2030 Will Be The Decade Of Agri-Tech’

Ramen noodles in Sweden, wheat bread in Tanzania and Chilean wines in China. The cross-Atlantic transit of the potato and the tomato from the Andes to Europe, and back again as French fries and pasta sauce. We think of the world as globalised and sophisticated in its food tastes, and our palettes as curious and ever-expanding. Food spreads cultural acceptance and understanding.
But the spread of food also exposes a darker underlying history of globalisation and industrialisation. Patterns in the way that food is distributed around the world follow colonial-industrial trends from the past. And while global trade has helped lift many out of poverty, it has not done so evenly. It has kept a colonialist imprint on the planet in a different way: with differentiated access to nutritious food and the rise of obesity and other food-related health problems.
Beyond adding unusual grains or fancy foods to their palettes, wealthy shoppers might have their pick of green beans imported from Kenya to the UK, or <a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/48.3/a-dry-future-weighs-heavy-on-california-agriculture" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">beef and grains grown in Uruguay by US farmers</a>.
Meanwhile, eaters in developing countries are more likely to eat “exotic” foods like white bread, maize or rice. These are less nutritious because of the way in which they are processed. In addition, exotic food crops tend to require unsustainable farming practices, like using more water in places where it’s already a scarce resource.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2015/02/01/food-new-oil/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Food The New Oil</a>
To escape these patterns, a new way of engaging with the complexity of food systems is needed. We need to adopt an approach that recognises that challenges are systemic and that they can’t be solved with silver bullet solutions.
A more systemic approach could help shift the global food system because it recognises that food production must become more environmentally sustainable and must be designed in a way that meets the needs of the world’s people in an equitable and just manner.
Understanding the food system as a complex system with interlinking social and ecological aspects is an important step that <a href="http://www0.sun.ac.za/cst/project/guidance-for-resilience-in-the-anthropocene-investments-for-development-graid/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">resilience thinking</a> brings to the table of food system governance.
<h2>Colonial roots</h2>
Like many problems in the global South, the global food system issues can be traced back to a colonial history. Back in 1989 two sociologists, Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, developed a useful concept in their work on agrarian studies: <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9523.1989.tb00360.x/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">global food regimes</a>. They described two key periods where the structure of the global food system enabled the uptake of Western-style capitalism and consumerism. The diasporic-colonial food regime of 1870–1914 and the mercantile-industrial food regime of 1947–1973. <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1016/S1057-1922%2805%2911009-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Friedmann</a> went on to describe a potential third regime that we might find ourselves in now: the corporate-environmental regime.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2014/09/01/pay-nose-food/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Why We Pay Through The Nose For Food</a>
The <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9523.1989.tb00360.x/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">first food regime</a> is defined by food imports to Europe from the colonies. That would include basic grains and livestock from the settler colonies, most notably to Australia, Canada, and the US, and tropical imports from the rest of the occupied colonies.
The second food regime rerouted food from the US “to its informal empire of postcolonial states on strategic perimeters of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10460-009-9218-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Cold War”</a>. It was framed as a development project that had a suite of interventions like food aid, green revolution technologies, and chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and the extension of international markets into the countryside.
<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10460-009-9218-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">At the same time</a>, a division of agricultural labour evolved at the international scale: cheap labour in the former colonies facilitated the flow of commodities across national borders, from poorer to richer countries. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/laura-pereira-321109" target="_blank" rel="author noopener noreferrer">Laura Pereira</a>, Researcher/Lecturer at the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, Stellenbosch University 
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a>
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Rotten Food,  Rotten Strike

The global food system still benefits the rich at the expense of the poor

<h3>Shashi Naidoo</h3>
South African businesswoman, model, actress and TV presenter, who recently became one of the founding members of Fashion with Feeling, a non-profit organization in the fashion industry.
HAPPINESS TO ME IS…Having the freedom and access to realize one’s potential and worth.
WHAT I FEAR THE MOST: Living a life without purpose.
WHAT I HATE IN OTHERS: Hate is such a strong and negative emotion. There are differences in others, which we find difficult to qualify with our own values and principles. I try to keep away from any negative behavior that is of no benefit to others or me.
I ADMIRE: My mother and sister have always been inspirational; they have always pursued their passions, and look for the best potential in everyone. One woman who is a great inspiration for me is Navi Pillay; she has gone where many women have not been able to, due to her dedication and commitment to human rights. She was the first woman of color to be a judge of the high court in South Africa; she was a judge of the international criminal court. It’s very important for us to speak up for those who are being deprived of their rights, and I find there is nothing nobler than pioneering one’s life to preserving human rights and equality.
MY LUXURIES: Shoes and handbags. I always remind myself that one day, my daughter will get to enjoy them as heirlooms.
WOULD YOU GO UNDER THE KNIFE FOR PLASTIC SURGERY? Plastic surgery exists for medical reasons and to help us enhance some of our features that we are insecure about. I prefer going to the gym than surgery, because the recovery period is not as painful as going under the knife. I am quite content with myself right now; maybe if gravity takes its toll one day, I will consider getting some work done.
MY THINKING: Keeping your focus is important if you want to make a success of anything. Sometimes we get really busy making a living and forget to make a life, which is detrimental to the mind. So always reward yourself for all your hard work, and take time out to say thank you.
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<h3>Chantel Dartnall</h3>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-29594 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-710x1024.jpg" alt="" width="710" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003.jpg 710w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-300x433.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-600x865.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-208x300.jpg 208w" sizes="(max-width: 710px) 100vw, 710px" />
Chef Chantel Dartnall is the culinary force behind Restaurant Mosaic at The Orient in Johannesburg that has one of the most diverse (and longest) wine lists this side of the Sahara.
<h4>Describe the food you create in three words?</h4>
Flavorful, botanical, artistic.
<h4>What makes a good chef?</h4>
Passion.
<h4>What make a terrible chef?</h4>
A chef who does not respect himself/herself or the people working with them.
<h4>What is your signature dish?</h4>
This season it has to be Birds of a Feather which is a trio of poultry. Fungi on the Forest Floor which features a beautiful combination of mushrooms. From previous seasons, Lobster Bisque, Duck leg Confit and Cambodian Butternut cream soup.
<h4>Your favorite restaurant in Johannesburg?</h4>
Chef Dario Di Angeli’s Cube Tasting Kitchen.
<h4>Whose cooking inspires you?</h4>
Chef Pieter Goosen at Hof van Cleve &#8211; Belgium, Chef Michel Bras &#8211; Aubrac, France, Chef Pascal Barbot – Paris.
<h4>Which words or phrases do you most overuse?</h4>
Taste, taste and re-taste.
<h4>What or who is the love of your life?</h4>
My lovable black cat, Peanut, short for Peanut Butter.
<h4>What is your greatest achievement?</h4>
Opening the Restaurant Mosaic eight years ago.
<h4>Where would you most like to live?</h4>
Italy for the food and the beautiful ancient cities.
<h4>What qualities do you most admire in other women?</h4>
Self-confidence, self-assurance and being a great leader.
<h4>What would your last meal on earth be?</h4>
Creamy wild mushroom and black truffle pasta and a very big wild strawberry
Mille-feuille and a bottle of Perrier-Jouet Belle Epoque champagne.

FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-001

INSPIRATION

Inside their MAMA Rocks food truck stationed in the upmarket Westlands area of Nairobi, Kenya, sisters Samantha and Natalie Mwedekeli are hard at work, rustling up burgers for what looks like an army of hungry people queuing up.
They dish out their signature eats with smiles and hellos sporting a crisp British accent. The two are founders of Nairobi’s latest epicurean street sensation.
It was only three years ago that Samantha, 36, and Natalie, 33, were in their home at Old Street, East London, in the United Kingdom (UK), mulling over their mundane nine-to-five jobs.
They made the bold decision to quit their jobs in the non-profit and human resources sectors respectively and start out in the food business.
The idea had been marinating in their heads for a couple of years, and the sisters, of Kenyan and Nigerian descent, figured it was now or never. They decided to start the business in Kenya, their father’s hometown.
Ten years ago, their parents, who had migrated to the UK, had relocated to Kenya, leaving their daughters in the care of their grandmother. Natalie and Samantha would visit their parents every year and these trips helped them see Nairobi transform.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-32150" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/MG_3410-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3410-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3410-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3410.jpg 720w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-32151" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/MG_3871-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3871-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3871-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3871-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3871-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_3871.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-32152" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/MG_8562-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_8562-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_8562-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/MG_8562.jpg 720w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
The restaurant scene in East Africa’s corporate hub has grown exponentially in the past decade, especially due to the increase in the number of retail establishments, such as the recently-reopened Westgate Mall, The Hub and urban hotels such as Villa Rosa Kempinski Nairobi and Radisson Blu.
“We’ve always had a drive to start our own business, partly because we grew up with very entrepreneurial parents so they infected us with that bug. They always emphasized to us that if you want to make a difference, you need to make your own mark and they always said that there’s a lot of potential in Africa. So we thought ‘why can’t we come up with a brand that’s born and bred in Africa and also has international appeal’?” say the sisters.
Starting a restaurant is by no means easy, especially for two young women from overseas with no culinary background. Samantha studied law at Kingston University London and Natalie has a business management degree from Royal Holloway. They owe it to their grandmother who is the best cook they know.
To gain some knowledge about the restaurant industry, the two worked as waitresses at various restaurants in London’s West End such as international sandwich chain Pret a Manger, and Patty &amp; Bun, a diner serving some of London’s finest burgers according to TimeOut.
Waitressing for about six months gave them insight into what makes people tick and how good food makes people feel. Using this experience and noting the establishments’ strict attention to detail, they decided on gourmet burgers infused with some African-inspired flavors.
Their parents were not in agreement with this change of career but on seeing the business plan, they soon got on board.
“Our father helped us gather the capital we needed and our mother is now our biggest fan, bragging to all her friends about our food.”
Fast forward six months to late 2014 and the Londoners had officially moved to Nairobi to start the groundwork, finding a location, suppliers and equipment. A chat with Kevin Ashley, owner of Java House in Kenya, made them take a step back in terms of finances.
They had not realized how expensive it would be to open a restaurant – a minimum of Ksh 14 million ($135,000) was needed for one that fit their requirements. Plan B was the food truck, which cut their investment by half.
“It’s relatively inexpensive, risks are limited and you can move around and test the market and see how people respond to you and if anything, that’s your investment because no one can take the truck away from you. It was really exciting because we were bringing something new to Nairobi,” says Natalie.
It took nine months to get the truck assembled; while that was being taken care of, the sisters decided to start testing the market by doing pop-ups in various locations to gauge people’s interest.
Their first attempt at selling their product was at a friend’s Thai restaurant. They did not advertise but ended up having a full house. This was a clear indication of Kenyans’ desire to try new things. Since then, MAMA Rocks serves over 200 customers every weekend including Fridays.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32153 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FRM_6899-684x1024.jpg" alt="" width="684" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FRM_6899.jpg 684w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FRM_6899-300x449.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FRM_6899-600x898.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FRM_6899-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 684px) 100vw, 684px" />
It’s just one of the numerous restaurants and cafes that have opened shop in Nairobi over the past year. Others include Pizza Hut, Ocean Basket, Adega, Dominos, KFC, News Café, Brioche, Nyama Mama and Roast by Carnivore.
Mikul Shah, founder of EatOut Kenya, East Africa’s largest online restaurant guide, says of the industry’s fast progression: “To some extent, the growth in supply might be faster than the demand. With so much competition and options, restaurants have had to focus on providing good value for money. We are seeing lots of deals and promotions to attract patrons. Overall, I feel that Nairobi has seen a boom in the dining culture, however it is a little worrying for smaller businesses as it will be a few years until the demand catches up.”
The MAMA Rocks sisters officially opened shop on New Year’s Eve 2015, their truck parked in the newly-opened creative events space, the Yard, in Westlands.
As word spread of their Africanized burgers, like their popular Mango Maasai Mama and Nollywood Suya Saga, sales soared. Within six months, they were able to pay off the cost of the truck and hired a few more people to help them with preparation and serving customers.
Ingredients for their dishes are sourced locally and they make the sauces from scratch every morning. As for the name MAMA Rocks, they say it came so naturally to them.
“We thought about African culture, the similar aspects to the different cultures across the entire continent. One of those aspects is that the mother is the backbone of the household. We wanted the brand to have a strong feminine energy and to celebrate the mother, hence MAMA.”
Coming from the first world to settle in fast-developing Kenya had its challenges, the biggest being the high level of corruption that hindered ease of doing business.
Transparency International ranked Kenya 139 out of 168 countries in their corruption index.
But when asked why Nairobi and not London or Lagos, Samantha promptly says: “Kenya is rich in opportunity and skills. It feels like a large canvas. There’s so much that can be done here that may have already been done in London. There’s not much left to explore or experiment in London. As for Lagos, it just wasn’t as developed as Nairobi is and food costs there tend to be much higher. But we plan to open there next when we are able to expand.”
The sisters are breaking even after a year in operation and plan on opening a restaurant soon to bring in more profits while still running the food truck. Samantha and Natalie are young, vibrant and eager to change the African gastronomic narrative.

MG_3406

Burgers On Wheels And Hungry For Success

It’s a 542-kilometer drive from Johannesburg to Beitbridge. As we arrive the sun is shining its warm golden light over the bridge connecting South Africa and Zimbabwe. There are no birds chirping over the Limpopo River. It seems like a peaceful morning, until you get closer.
There is pandemonium as hundreds of cars line up to be stripped and searched before proceeding into Zimbabwe. A journey to Harare is delayed by at least three hours. President Robert Mugabe’s government has banned the importation of basic goods from South Africa. All banned goods are confiscated.
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Priscilla Ngwenya is a woman in the autumn of her life. She has brown wrinkly skin, dull brown eyes and a jutting jawline that makes her look tired of suffering. On this day, she says she has endured pain and penury working for her grandchildren at home in Zimbabwe. She is not about to let anyone else gain from her sweat, nor her liters of cooking oil that she is trying to import.
“I will not work for the police. I work too hard for you to take food I bought for my family for yourselves. If I can’t get this to my hungry grandchildren, then no one else will have it,” she says as she pours 20 liters of cooking oil onto the street that she carried 2,000 kilometers from her job as a domestic worker in Cape Town.
Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce banned basic imports of goods, such as cooking oil, coffee creamers, hair extensions, body creams, building material, furniture, baked beans, cereals, peanut butter, jams and mayonnaise. It is all part of a “Buy Zimbabwe” campaign that government hopes will see factories built in its land.
With millions worth of goods going into Zimbabwe, South Africa is the largest importer to the country and the biggest trading partner.
“[The ban] is a desperate move by Zimbabwe, to try and preserve their currency and to stimulate internal trade, however [it is] not viable as no local company can provide the basic consumer goods that South Africa offers,” says Ian Cruickshanks, Chief Economist at the Institute of Race Relations.
“This government is very stupid. We buy from South Africa because it is cheaper and it’s the only way for us to survive. Buying anything made in Zimbabwe is very expensive. The rands I earn can’t support my family,” Ngwenya screams throwing the empty bucket on the ground at Beitbridge.
The ban on imports has irked many like Ngwenya. Next to her is a man breaking the plastic electrical conduits he isn’t allowed to take across the border.
Just days before, traders burned a warehouse, where the confiscated goods were held, and barricaded the roads with rocks and burning tyres, forcing the closure of the border, believed to be the first time in history.
“I buy goods in South Africa and sell them here in a small shop in Bulawayo. That’s the way I have been surviving and keeping my family afloat. I used to be a teacher but I couldn’t deal with the lack of payments by government and I decided to get into business,” says Prudence Dube.
Tuleka Ngci, of GoAfrica, who has been transporting goods from South Africa to Malawi since December, says business has been slow after traders blocked the Beitbridge border. Ngci transports goods such as groceries, fruit and vegetables from South Africa through the Zimbabwean border to Malawi every week.
“If we can’t pass through the border to buy goods then that means there’s no business for us. Customers blame us for what is happening in Zimbabwe and as a result we find ourselves in the middle of a crossfire we don’t even understand,” says Ngci.
“The restriction against imported goods is threatening the livelihood of people and when people are hungry they get angry. And in this case who knows who they’ll take out their anger on.”
According to Dube, many Zimbabweans turn to smuggling.
“My business is registered, I pay duty for the goods I buy, and I employ six people. If this ban is not lifted, I will have to go the smuggling route like most informal traders in the country. That will be a disadvantage to government. I don’t think they thought this through and looked at how we would be affected,” she says.
Smuggling goods in open sight seems easy enough to do. At the border, some authorities are not shy to take bribes. We carried a two-liter cooking oil bottle to test the system. The man doing the checks told us cooking oil could no longer be imported into the country before asking for a bribe to let us through.
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“I have a lot of friends who never pay anything. The officials are also hungry so they just pocket whatever they can get from people,” says Dube.
Most small businesses smuggle goods with the help of transporters like Bongani Sibanda.
“Because of the economic situation in Zimbabwe, smuggling is an everyday thing and we see ourselves as business people providing a service. I carry groceries, and whatever else people send from South Africa to Zimbabwe, twice a week. As long as it is not drugs or any illegal goods I see myself as helping people,” he says.
Sibanda says the ban will affect his “business”. More bribes mean higher fees.
“It will also bring in more business to us because those who cross the border to stock up themselves may be afraid to smuggle things so they will commission us,” he says.
Sibanda worked at a shoe factory in Bulawayo for 15 years before being thrown out by the factory closure. He now makes around $2,500 a month, enough to send his daughter to university in South Africa.
Sibanda may be making a buck, but the Zimbabwean economy isn’t.
According to media, the Chief Executive Officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, Christopher Mugaga, estimates Zimbabwe could be losing $1.5 billion every year through smuggling of goods. The figure is more than one third of the country’s $4 billion national budget. Local industries have closed shop as their products fail to compete with the cheap smuggled products, cutting 100,000 jobs over the last five years. The government is said to make $60 million per month from duties charged at Beitbridge.
At the Beitbridge border post, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) Acting Commissioner General, Happias Kuzvinzwa, in a statement, has urged members of staff to desist from corruption.
“It is time to wipe away corruption! We must all know that we are accountable to the nation and seriously consider our duty as custodians of revenue laws in this country,” he says.
He says ZIMRA will intensify lifestyle audits to decrease numbers of goods smuggled into the country.
As we drive off, it seems trouble and smuggling at the border will not go away anytime soon.

The Border On A Slow Road To Nowhere

Table mountain, the striking mesa above Cape Town, lords over another impressive African monument: the multistory Golden Acre shopping center. Lunchtime crowds pour into the glassy, brightly lit structure, and from within it is impossible not to notice the dominance of South Africa’s second-richest man, Christo Wiese. His bargain-bin clothier, PEP, pulls foot traffic to the basement. Above it, you’ll find his more upscale Ackermans chain. Around the corner is his OK Furniture and his grocery chain, Shoprite, which takes up two floors.
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By and large, they all carry the same message. PEP’s window ads, accented in canary yellow, proclaim it the home of the “Lowest Price in South Africa.” Brightly colored bunting in OK Furniture heralds a similar promise. Shoprite (among its many slogans: “Lower prices, that’s our promise”) will even play moneylender, fronting customers up to R7,500 (roughly $470).
“The business has basically been built on one slogan: Low prices you can trust. Just very, very low everyday prices,” says Wiese (whose name, fittingly, is pronounced VEE-sa, like the credit card). “I suppose we could be described as the Wal-Mart of Africa.” Underscoring the cost-conscious philosophy, the 74-year-old is telling me this at his company headquarters, in an industrial area that abuts a composter and Adult World, which sells what you think it does.
His offices, like his stores, are decidedly spare: drab beige enlivened only by some hotel- quality art (a portrait of an elephant herd hangs outside the door of the conference room he uses as an office). “People have very limited budgets,” continues Wiese, clad in a capitalist’s power uniform – blue suit, blue shirt – the very picture of the lily-white executive that still controls most of South African business. “They have to get extremely good value for their money.” His hunch – that value trumps everything – led him to create the largest retail business in Africa. Publicly traded Shoprite does revenue of $9.9 billion a year, while PEP’s parent company, Steinhoff, brings in $11.8 billion (some of it from selling cellphones and home furnishings). Combined, they net almost $2 billion in annual profits, operate more than 9,000 stores in 30 countries and employ over 200,000 people. No other African retailer comes close to rivaling their breadth and depth, and Wiese controls both.
Those stakes are largely what makes Wiese one of the planet’s richest people, with a $5.8 billion fortune. More than 60% of his wealth is in Shoprite and Steinhoff, while another 30% or so comes from his shares of Brait, an investment vehicle Wiese uses to buy other companies, many of them outside South Africa. His stock in Tradehold, a real estate firm, accounts for much of the remaining 10%.
But if Wiese is to continue his expansion he must move outside of his African comfort zone. The continent isn’t booming the way it once was. Economic growth across Africa has slid from close to 7% in 2007 to about 4% in 2014, the last year for which data are available. In coming years it isn’t likely to much surpass that figure. South Africa, still Wiese’s most important market, is emblematic of the larger trend – stuck at sub-2% growth for the foreseeable future. The slowdown gravely threatens Wiese’s ambitions. He can shut his eyes and picture his empire twice as big as it is today, but for it to grow that large, he must look beyond Africa.
And he’s already started. PEP is expanding rapidly in Europe, while Wiese is snapping up all sorts of companies through Brait, including majority stakes in British discount retailer (sound familiar?) New Look for $1.2 billion last June and Richard Branson’s fitness center chain, Virgin Active, for $1 billion a month later. Put broadly, Wiese is a little Sam Walton, in terms of his focus, and a little Warren Buffett, in terms of amalgamating a portfolio. As a matter of fact, he’s beaten Buffett handily lately. His holding company, Brait, has trounced Berkshire Hathaway in total returns over three years (160% versus 31%), five years (230% to 51%) and ten years (314% to 121%).
<div id="attachment_4832" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4832" class="size-medium wp-image-4832" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0000171388-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – APRIL 22: Billionaire businessman Dr. Christo Wiese on April 22, 2009 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Foto24 / Sharief Jaffer)</div>
“Christo has been a massive risk taker his whole life,” says Syd Vianello, a retail analyst in Johannesburg, who has observed Wiese over many decades. “Africa is not a place for sissies. You’ve got to have nerves of steel. In Africa they see him as a genius.”
The breathtaking views of Cape Town, where land and sea dramatically converge to produce vistas of green mountains towering above deep blue water, can be quickly forgotten on a nine-hour drive north to the dry, hot savanna city of Upington, an unsightly provincial town alongside the Orange River, close to the Kalahari Desert. Upington does possess one unique site: a statue of a donkey, a rare tribute to the quintessential beast of burden. It is not undeserved. Starting in the 1880s, farmers, employing donkeys to pump water, tamed this rough part of the country with an almost puritanical determination.
Wiese’s father was one of those men. He owned a sheep and cattle farm, as well as a car dealership in town. “People in Upington were hardworking, very neat, very orderly – disciplined,” says Wiese. “People who were not neat always stood out like a sore thumb.” For college, Wiese attended Stellenbosch University, one of South Africa’s better schools, situated in a sleepy area awash in wine and vineyards. He studied law and became head student of his residence hall and an active member of a progressive student organization.
After graduating in 1967, he decided he’d rather return home and join the small retail business owned by his cousin’s husband than become an attorney. The company had around ten discount stores near Upington, which were called PEP. With Wiese on board and helping guide expansion, sales went from 4 million rand in 1970 to 29 million rand (around $100 million today) four years later. Fast growth, but Wiese lost interest after a moment of self-discovery.
“I had worked out for myself that I’m not really” – he trails off, as if about to utter a dirty word – “a number-two man.” There was another concern, too. “I started thinking about getting married,” he says. “And the way I lived in those days, I was away from home 20 days a month. That’s no way to build a marriage. So I thought if I go and practice law, at least I’ll be home much more.”
While working as a barrister in criminal and commercial law in Cape Town, Wiese, restless still, made a futile run for parliament in 1977 on the opposition party ticket, partly inspired by his new father-in-law, a controversial member of parliament expelled from the ruling, pro-apartheid party for dissension. Wiese also grew interested in something that has always attracted the ambitious in South Africa – diamonds. He found a mine nearer his hometown, in Richtersveld. (“The area has a stark beauty, like a moon landscape. Very sparse vegetation, very little rainfall.”) He bought it for about $20 million in today’s currency and began mining and trading diamonds.
<div id="attachment_4830" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4830" class="size-medium wp-image-4830" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/AV_00022953-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" />JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – JUNE 12: Billionare businessman Christo Wiese on June 12, 2012 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Financial Mail / Hetty Zantman)</div>
Five years after purchasing it, in 1981, he sold it, and looking for his next chapter, he turned to his cousin and PEP, which by then had 450 locations, including a grocery business, Shoprite, it had added a few years earlier. In taking a check (worth roughly $100 million in current terms) for his successful, middling business, the cousin was set for life. Wiese, no longer number two, pictured something much grander. “Maybe I was more ambitious,” he says, quietly, eyebrows arched.
What Wiese envisioned was retail at its rawest, and he understood how attractive it could be. In modest, unadorned storefronts, PEP sold only the simplest kinds of clothes (“underwear, schoolwear, very basic stuff”). The choice between a white shirt and a blue one was often the most complicated one in the store. Shoprite did the same with groceries. All that mattered to Wiese’s target market – poor whites and a black population kept systematically impoverished – was price.
In a perverse twist, apartheid ensured him a gigantic customer base of some 20 million nonwhites, who made up more than 70% of the population. They were incapable of climbing the ladder or earning more money – or shopping elsewhere. And the heavy economic sanctions against South Africa meant little in the way of foreign competition. It was a perfect market: massive and artificially protected.
“Wiese saw the opportunity faster than anybody else,” says retail analyst Vianello. “He targeted the bottom end of the market, and nobody could argue his business had any element of waste. He cut out all the extravagance and gave people what they wanted at the lowest possible price.” The concept proved popular enough for Wiese to begin expanding aggressively, sometimes opening as many as 100 new stores a year. While other retailers concentrated on stores in large markets, he eagerly plunged into rural and poorer areas. He’d rather his customers spend their money in his stores than spend it traveling to them.
Wiese was maniacal about costs, a business necessity in lowmargin retailing and perfectly fitting with his personality – a billionaire who keeps spare change neatly stashed in a tiny bottle inside his Lexus SUV. “Christo is stingy,” says James “Whitey” Basson, Wiese’s right-hand man at Shoprite since day one and an old buddy from Stellenbosch University. “He’ll give me the nicest bottle of champagne as a present, and I’ll open it up, and I’ll see he forgot to take out the message: It’s a bottle from Lord So-and-So. He’s a regifter.”
To guard against corporate expenses, PEP manufactured many of its clothes in 11 factories; one was situated next to the company’s modest offices in Parow Industria. Most important, from almost the start PEP relied on a central distribution system with warehouses to store goods, a total departure from how most South African retailers operated (with many deliveries from many suppliers to each shop). “That was a no-brainer,” Basson says. “Getting one truckload to a store is substantially cheaper than getting 30 trucks to wait outside the store and offload 30 different times.”
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In 1986 Wiese spun off Shoprite and PEP into separate public companies while maintaining control of both. Good timing. Four years later Nelson Mandela was freed after spending almost three decades in prison. Apartheid was ending. South African companies were no longer pariahs, and Wiese began to expand elsewhere in Africa. A year after Mandela ascended to the presidency in 1994, Shoprite opened its first store in central Africa, in Zambia, followed by Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Uganda. PEP had a similar trajectory. Their stores’ simple model made them easily exportable.
“Wiese and Basson sat down and took a view that they could conquer Africa, and they went out and conquered Africa,” says Vianello. Shoprite’s size ($2 billion in 1996 sales with about $120 million in cash flow and little debt) allowed it to move more quickly than local rivals. “How long does it take to clear a container in Angola or Nigeria? What bribes do you have to pay to get supplies in? Who on earth would finance them to put up stores? They had to build their own stores themselves. No one else would.” (Wiese insists he has spent not one rand on bribery.)
Other growth came through acquisitions. By the 1990s he had already made six purchases to expand both Shoprite and PEP, pushing PEP’s operations as far as Britain and its sales to more than $2 billion. In 1997 he bought OK Bazaars (and its nearly 300 grocery and furniture stores) from South African Breweries for just one rand. The catch? OK Bazaars was losing around $40 million annually, which was just about how much Shoprite was booking in annual profits. It could be kept on life support for just so long.
“We bet the farm,” says Wiese. He reached for a familiar page from the playbook: “cutting frills, lowering overhead,” including renegotiating several onerous leases. As it turns out, OK Bazaars had good bones and had simply been mismanaged. “Christo is a fantastic corporate deal thinker,” says Basson. “He always makes me think: What would the alternative be if I didn’t make a deal? What happens if the opposition buys the company?”
Wiese didn’t really develop a profile outside of Africa until recently, and to his annoyance, his arrival was trumpeted not by a cunning deal but by something more ignoble. It came after U.K. customs officials detained him at London City Airport in 2009 with two suitcases filled with nearly $1 million in cash. They seized it, suspecting illicit origins. The British and South African press merrily picked up on the incident – apparently suspecting Wiese had been nabbed for money laundering – and were further emboldened by Wiese’s stubbornness in fighting for the funds’ return and his insistence that the amount was “insignificant.” (The Daily Mail’s gleeful headline: “It’s Just Peanuts To Me.”) The government ended up returning the money – interest attached – but the damage was done. He still won’t talk publicly about the incident, and until recently, it was pretty much the extent of his reputation in the West.
That’s now beginning to change, and much of his activity is still in Britain. When his holding company, Brait, first showed an interest in stretching beyond South Africa in 2012, it invested in British supermarket business Iceland Foods and added to its position in November 2015, when it paid about $275 million to increase its position from 19% to 57%. Two more deals came last year: the stakes purchased in discount retailer New Look and gym chain Virgin Active. A second Wiese company, Invicta, has put its capital into industrial companies: unsexy firms with predictable, recurring revenue streams, like Singapore-based Kian Ann Engineering, a distributor of heavy machinery parts. And a third Wiese vehicle, Tradehold, watched the value of its U.K. property portfolio increase by about 50% to roughly $120 million in February 2015 (the latest full-year results available), driven substantially by new investments in the British real estate market, where it owns residential, industrial and office space.
PEP has charged into eastern Europe, too. After its initial move into this part of the continent in 2005 (Poland mostly but also the Czech Republic and Slovakia), PEP has proven its model successful there. Its eastern European stores do about $1,800 per square meter, a 60% increase from 2012 and roughly double what a comparable competitor might do. The region is now 11% of PEP’s $2.9 billion in annual revenue (up from 5% in 2012).
As PEP broadens its store expansion into Britain it will likely run up against the most entrenched competition, including venerable discount retailer Primark. Considering this, Wiese blithely expresses a malapropism: “There’s the old American saying that only three things are certain: death, taxes and competition. You can’t shy away from competition. You’ve just got to go meet them.” And besides, Primark tries to be fashionable, while PEP proudly does not. “We don’t have fashion. You can’t come into our stores and expect a wide selection of colors and pattern,” says Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste. “Our stuff is for people who have to have it, not want to have it. It offers value to the bottom-end customer and gives them some dignity in what they wear.”
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Last December expansion-minded Steinhoff began trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in addition to its long-standing listing in Johannesburg. But not before Wiese got slapped with a reminder that his international ambitions wouldn’t proceed without a false step. A few days before its Frankfurt debut German tax authorities raided local Steinhoff offices as part of an investigation into its accounting. Steinhoff dismisses the investigation as baseless, but it certainly spooked the company’s investors. The stock dropped about 15% in a month – wiping away almost $600 million from Wiese’s personal fortune.
Having long parried advances from those interested in buying his companies – including a visit by Wal-Mart heir and then chairman Rob Walton several years ago – Wiese sees himself firmly in command of his empire for the foreseeable future. Ahead, there’s one obvious final frontier for Africa’s retail pioneer: America. “We’ve been hesitant to plunge into the retail industry there. What can we teach them?” he says. “But we’re looking at getting involved there – one or two opportunities.
“In a decade I’m hoping you’ll find the business has grown, hopefully at the same pace as the previous decade. That will require a lot of thinking, a lot of commitment and a lot of energy – and I’m hoping that you’ll find me right here still.”

Tag: Food

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