By Anita Dangazele
- Mthatha student used R500 from his student allowance to start a chicken farm that now employs five people.
- The business has grown to include a shop selling farm supplies and a pig farm, but needs more space to expand.
A 21-year-old Eastern Cape student used R500 from his food money to build a business that now feeds five families.
Ngcali Takata from Mthatha took the money from his National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) allowance while studying at Walter Sisulu University. Today he owns a poultry farm and a shop in the town centre.
“We grew up on this kind of business; my parents were not working, they grew and sold chicks for a living. So in varsity, when I realised that I wasn’t like other students, I couldn’t afford to buy clothes and also send money back home.
“I decided to go back to what I grew up on. I took R500 from my allowance and bought chicks and the business just started growing from there,” he said.
The Medical Sciences graduate now sells chicken products, animal feed, medicine, vaccines and vegetable seedlings from his container shop in Mthatha’s town centre.
“I realised that poultry farming alone wasn’t sustainable in terms of making a living, so I needed to find a sustainable way to make money and so I decided to open a retail store where I could sell farming products, including animal feed and medicines,” he said.
Takata learned his business skills from the internet because he couldn’t afford courses.
“I tried to do short business courses but I could never afford them, so I decided to just google everything I needed to learn about running a business. For example, I learnt to calculate a mark-up from the internet – I even learnt how to do a balance sheet from the internet,” he said.
The Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda) helped him grow by giving him funding and incubators.
“My only issue right now is that we don’t have enough space to grow the business; we have some egg-laying hens. We used to have more hens but because of space challenges, we’ve had to reduce the number. If we could have more space, we could grow the business into an even bigger one,” he said.
Takata has also started keeping pigs and wants to hire more young people as his business grows.
Pictured above: Ngcali Awonke Takata, 21, who started a farming business from his NSFAS allowance.
Source: Supplied
