daniel chigunwe
Jennifer Mufamba
“Investing in a good name is one business principle that has become so undervalued by the young generation, yet this is one powerful weapon against the competition in this highly competitive market,” said Mrs Shingai Shilla Maguchu, the founder of AFRONATURA Foods, a company which produces and sells healthy lifestyle foods.
The need to balance between her professional career and family role as a mother led her to seek a career path in which she could be in charge of her own schedules.
What started as a small personal dream soon grew into something bigger and it became the beginning of a journey that would define the lives of each of her team members.
“The presence of the marginalised rural women who are celebrating because of the opportunity to partner with AFRONATURA, as they provide food on the table for their families opened my eyes to the opportunity I have to personally contribute to the Zimbabwean story,” said Mrs. Maguchu.
She started the company driven mainly after seeing the huge number of people suffering from consuming more processed and refined foods as well as failing to utilise the resources available in the country.
But beyond her personal motivations, Mrs Maguchu says she also derives inspiration from the bible, specifically Zechariah 4:10a which says, “Do not despise the day of small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin…”. This has raised hope in her to want to achieve more as an entrepreneur with people’s health at heart.
The 43-year-old entrepreneur was born and bred in Mvuma, being the eldest daughter in a family of three. She says she hails from an average family.
Her mother was also self-employed and survives on selling knitted products sold in other countries, popularly cross-border trading, while the father worked as a clerk at Athens Mine.
Mrs Maguchu said her background motivated her to pursue her dreams for a better future.
Mrs Maguchu did her primary school education at Mvuma Primary School, proceeded to Serima High School for O-Level studies and Gokomere High School for A-Level schooling in 1996.
After finishing high school, Mrs Maguchu later pursued a career in accounting and finance for over 10 years before embarking on her entrepreneurship journey.
She attained a BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brooks University and is also a holder of The Chartered Institute of Secretaries and Administrators (CIS), Association Of Chartered Certified Accountants ( ACCA) qualifications.
As if that was not enough, Mrs Maguchu is currently a final year student studying for Post Graduate Diploma in Project Management with Project Management Institute of Zimbabwe ( PMZ).
In the past, she has worked as finance manager at Homelink, a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Subsidiary.
Mrs Maguchu said she regarded herself as a product of a number of people who had an impression on her life over the various stages of her life journey.
“Outside my family, I have a number of individuals especially in my formative years who believed in my potential and personality including my former High school teacher Mr Ishmael Musvosvi who a year after I left the school named his first daughter, Shingai Shilla Musvosvi, after me as a gesture of his personal conviction and confidence in my capabilities and potential as an individual,” she said.
In the process of building her career, she said she encountered a number of challenges including financial limitations, which she had to overcome one way or the other.
“Building something is not easy, there are a lot of sacrifices both financial and social, quoting one renowned business mentor Dr Shingie Munyeza who in his entrepreneurship 101 rules of success in business says it is called ‘Return on Sacrifice (ROS)’,” she said.
Mrs Maguchu saids in the quest for success in entrepreneurship there were costs of compliance for start-ups like AFRONATURA, including high license fees, which are prohibitive relative to those for established businesses that can easily absorb such overheads.
She said informal traders evade most of the regulatory requirements since they were not formally registered, which negatively affects them, including pricing competitiveness.
The combination of her academic and professional exposures haved helped her to apply the theory she learnt to the practical reality of running a business.
Among those that help carry the load when it becomes too heavy is her spouse, however, she reckons there that at times the vision grows bigger than one’s support system, which requires the right adjustments.
Since its formation in June 2020, AFRONATURA has managed to set up two retail outlets in the Borrowdale and Avondale suburbs of Harare and expects to expand its production capacity, product range and distribution network to meet the demand from local and international customers.
AFRONATURA is focused on the provision of healthy food products at a time where there is a growing awareness in the market of the value of healthy lifestyles of which a healthy diet is a key contributor.
“I would say my biggest achievement so far is the ability to come up with an idea or a concept that is relevant to the needs of the market as past experience including failed previous attempts in business have made me appreciate how valuable this aspect is to any business ventures,” she said.
The company has hitherto helped a number of disadvantaged women to provide for their families through earning income from supplying indigenous grains and dried vegetables and fruits to the company.
The products include indigenous grains meal, dried vegetables, healthy herbs, honey, and cereals, all meant to promote good and sustainable healthy status to the people.
The grains the company is involved in includes finger millet, sorghum, pearl millet, Brown Rice and samp.
Traditional dried vegetables it deals in include nyevhe and mushrooms and dried fruits including mauyu, masawu, nyii as well as healthy herbs and spices like garlic powder, turmeric, ginger, baobab seed powder, avocado seed powder, tamarind, indolwane, and cereals which include puffed wheat, Oats, bran flakes, granola, muesli.
“Our key products which include the indigenous grains, dried vegetables and fruits are locally produced by our partners who are rural small-scale farmers who usually struggle to get a ready market for their produce as the business focuses on the value addition of raw materials which are readily available in our country.
“There is a huge gap in our national production system which results in significant avoidable losses through both wastages and lost potential income across the production chain.
“This focus makes players such as AFRONATURA important contributors to the overall Zimbabwean Vision of economic empowerment for the nation,” Mrs Maguchu noted.
She said in line with the vision 2030, communities needed to be empowered through raising awareness of the commercial value of resources around them.
This, she said, was very critical to open the peoples’ eyes to the treasures that they already have around them, which calls for support and assistance in identifying markets.
Mrs Maguchu also said people needed to embrace a healthy living lifestyle which includes a healthy diet free from over processed foods to give “our bodies adequate physical exercise”.
She also called for increased cultivation of indigenous crops and preservation of valuable trees, as they provide natural resistance to adverse weather elements including tamarind and the Baobab tree whose roots, bark, leaves, fruits, and fruit seeds have immense health benefits.
“My encouragement to the youth is that it is important to value personal integrity in all business dealings and take time to build your brand and understand the concept of delayed gratification,” she said.
Online Reporter