How African Superfoods Inspires Local Agripreneur

Indigenous African ingredients and food traditions are underrepresented on the local and international markets. Black Umbrellas Global Entrepreneur Week 2018 overall winner Sipamandla Manqele founded her unique agribusiness to help bridge this gap.

- Siyanda Sishuba

Local Village, based in Bryanston, Johannesburg, produces breakfast cereal and packages indigenous African superfoods that are grown sustainably.

According to its founder and owner, Sipamandla Manqele, the agribusiness was founded on a vision of a network of vibrant, local agripreneurs across the continent supplying equitably sourced and sustainably grown indigenous African ingredients.

She says her passion for Africa and the development of its people is expressed in one of her business’s founding principles: to source ingredients from mainly small-scale and local farmers.

The food company makes granola and also sells grains, legumes, flour and the African superfoods teff, roselle and plantain flour.

“I’m committed to contributing to the development of our beloved continent,” she says.

A BORN ENTREPRENEUR

Manqele grew up in rural Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape. She says she has always been interested in starting her own business and developing her community. While in Grade 11, she registered her first business manufacturing toilet paper. But this company never took off.

“The equipment was available but the demands of school became too difficult for me to continue the venture. I had to let go of the idea,” she says.

In 2010, she went to the University of KwaZulu-Natal to study for a degree in social sciences, majoring in community development and entrepreneurship.

After graduating in 2014, she moved to Johannesburg, where she landed her first job at an asset management company. She worked there for 18 months, but her desire to start her own business soon re-emerged. She decided to explore the food industry, as she had grown up in an area where people’s income came mainly from agricultural products.

She quit her job, and started selling free-range chicken around the Sandton area.