One Agripreneur, Two Enterprises. Success Despite The Odds!

When the COVID-19 lockdown forced Ncumisa Mkabile to shut down her catering business, she put her entrepreneurial spirit to the test by starting two small-scale farming businesses on a piece of land in Khayelitsha. Jeandré van der Walt reports.

- Jeandré van der Walt

“When one door closes, another one opens,” says Ncumisa Mkabile of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, who started not one, but two new enterprises after being forced to close her catering business in March.

“Unfortunately, I had to close due to limited trade brought about by the COVID-19 lockdown regulations. The company was my only source of income, so I had to make plans to find an alternative source of income.”

Mkabile started looking around for opportunities and realized there was a market for chicken in her community. “I used money from my savings and started selling [slaughtered] chickens, doing door-to door deliveries. I soon realised that there was also a high demand for live chickens in the local community, so I decided to raise chickens to supply people who wanted to start their own businesses. At the time, though, I continued with my door-to-door deliveries. That’s how Mamcube Homegrown Chickens started,” she explains.

Mkabile has a chicken house on a 90m x 34m plot in Khayelitsha. She currently rents the property but is in the process of buying the land.

“I usually stock up with about 1 000 off layers and they get sold out within a week. Unfortunately, there are no local suppliers, so once a week I take a three-hour drive to buy my chickens. In the future, I plan to buy day-old chicks, grow them, and sell them as fully grown chickens.”

SPINACH PRODUCTION

In addition to her chicken enterprise, Mkabile has started planting spinach on the plot.

“My initial plan was to plant green peppers in September. However, at that stage, it was still winter in the Western Cape and I didn’t want to wait until spring.”