The Great Return…Back to the Office — Lionesses of Africa

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by Alice da Silva

I share my thoughts on how to prepare for the return to the office, with the aim of minimal disruption – emotionally or to productivity. The preferred objective is for the change to be as seamless as possible, so that one’s energy can rather be spent on being positive to embrace the new challenge, instead of ruminating on the negatives, and focusing on resistance to leaving the home office. 

While we use the word ‘return’ because we have worked from the office previously, we cannot expect to be the same people we were before – because we are not. A lot has happened in two years of lockdowns and restrictions. Our return this time will not be like it was previously when we returned from annual leave. And so that is why I am thinking about easing into a new routine and lifestyle gradually to avoid the experience being a sudden shock.

  • Start doing less of the comfort things you can do now because you are at home, and start doing things more like you will when you go into the office.

  • Think about what you will do for lunch and snacks and start shopping accordingly to get into the habit and have more success in maintaining your plan. This is a good time to focus on healthier options.

  • Get used to wearing office-fit clothing again, and jewellery and makeup if that is what you will do when you go to the office. It’s not necessary to do it for a full day immediately – just because we are avoiding a sudden shock when we go back to the office, does not mean we should have the sudden shock now while working from home.

  • Do a wardrobe audit. Maybe lockdown has restricted the fit of your clothes. Take out what doesn’t fit and either sell it or give it away. And get yourself new clothes. It doesn’t have to be a lot, just enough to mix and match. But make sure that when you open your closet, anything you see and take out to wear will fit you well today and be comfortable. You don’t need to start the day with negative energy feeling like a failure before you’ve even left home or logged on.

  • How about your fitness routine? Did you start a new one during lockdown? Did you keep up your existing activities or did you change venues and times because you were more flexible? Consider how you will adapt this to being back at the office. Perhaps you can join or re-join the sports club or gym near work so that you can go after work on your way home. Don’t let the change become an excuse to drop your active lifestyle or to not start one. This is also a good time to incorporate new goals into the new routine.

  • Even home chores need planning. Perhaps you were hanging up your laundry in the morning and taking it off the line before the storm came – now you can decide if you are going to leave it out there all day, or will you do it in the evening and hang it inside on a clothes horse?

  • If you are anxious about being back, pack some comfort items like sanitiser, wet wipes, extra masks and anything that will make you feel safe.

  • Consider the time spent with family and how to ensure you maintain the quality time you may have enjoyed while working from home and having lunch together, for example. Think of different ways to build quality times together in your new routines. Be excited about doing things differently, and be creative.

  • Your pets may have benefitted from the extra time spent with you at home. Plan ways to maintain activities together that you both enjoy. Fit this into your new routine – perhaps a morning walk with your dog will be just what you need to start the day with a clear mind, and the comfort of knowing your dog will be fine at home till you return, having already enjoyed the highlight of his day with you. Or an evening walk can be a good way to de-stress after the traffic on the way home and to loosen the muscles after having sat at your desk indoors all day.

Embrace this change with enthusiasm to start a new version of your working experience. Look forward to the things you may not have missed or that you took for granted while you were at the office, and think of how you will appreciate them and allow yourself to see the wonder of a new routine. Look forward to seeing your colleagues again in person. It can be refreshing to be on the threshold of a new way of life, take the opportunity to include healthy habits that will add value to your health, professionalism and sense of worth and self-respect. 

The most important aim of preparing for this life change is to make it a new experience to be excited about, rather than a trauma to endure. 

I hope that sharing my thoughts is helpful – and good luck!



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Four Thousand Weeks — Lionesses of Africa

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by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department

“I have become to myself a land of trouble and inordinate sweat.” 

St Augustine in his confessions (here) wrote: “Assuredly I labour here and I labour within myself; I have become to myself a land of trouble and inordinate sweat.”

I labour within myself.

We’ve all seen them – the surveys that ask just how busy we are, how much time we have for a walk in the Park or a chat with our neighbour. The results are all depressingly similar – as the years move on so we become busier and busier. Running at full speed is never enough and as we fall exhausted into bed after yet another day spent at 100mph we have that nagging thought that perhaps we just didn’t achieve all we set out to do when we bounded out of bed that morning.

Sadly, as pointed out in a wonderful book ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ by Oliver Burkeman (here), it is a depressing fact that actually these surveys significantly underestimate by some distance the busy-ness of our current lives, because those of us who are really, truly busy, simply do not have the time to answer such surveys! Bit obvious if we think about it, nobody needs telling us that there isn’t enough time in a day. We see it the whole time. 

We ‘joke’ about Lionesses working 36 hours each day as they run and grow their businesses, bootstrapping their way to a point at which financiers can no longer ignore. (seriously – do you really want us to show the statistics again?) But it is a fact within our short lives that our inboxes are like weeds on speed, growing and multiplying like crazy! Then there is Social Media with its magical ability to suck us in when we are least expecting it, as suddenly a quick look at Instagram becomes a 3 hours lost! All of that way before we look into our cluttered brain for those things we should be doing alongside those we want to be doing – you know, those kind of commitments or tasks that are hanging around in our lives, but haven’t yet properly dealt with. The productivity guru David Allen – writer of the bestseller Getting Things Done (here) calls them an ‘open loop’ – that just seems to become fatter as more gets stuffed in, but never ends.

All of this brings Constant Distraction. Our brains are working overtime whilst our attention span shrinks – a horrendous combination if you actually had time to think about it!

Luckily we as Lionesses can multitask – but even that is under attack as a recent study has shown (here): “”People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves,” said neuroscientist Earl Miller…“The brain is very good at deluding itself.”

Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the most part, we simply can’t focus on more than one thing at a time (…and yes they didn’t just test this on men, before anyone asks!)…What we can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.””

Still, we digress…

The title of Oliver Burkeman’s book seems a little strange at first look, but all is quickly explained. If you live to 80, you have a little over 4,000 weeks on this earth. 4,000 weeks! And that’s if you are lucky enough to live to 80 of course.

4,000 weeks…Hmmm, well if we were to follow Mr.Gladwell’s well thumbed book on what it takes to truly master anything (10,000 hours) that’s 59.5 weeks and given that the first 521 weeks (10 years) of our lives is spent potty training and learning to walk, talk and read, we are already eating into this strange and frighteningly small number with some speed.

So what is the point other than making us all so fearful of missing out on the next week, day, hour, minute even second of our lives that our brains go into overdrive and we just succumb to the nearest chair and start to aimlessly flounder and dribble from the corner of our mouths? It would appear that sub-consciously we know that we have this small window of opportunity to do EVERYTHING. This finite amount of time creates an almost panic in our minds that rather than start on all that we know we have to do, which by now has become frightening because we have so little time in which to do it, we allow ourselves to wallow in the warm comfort blanket of distraction. 

Far better (our brain tells us) is to hide from the fear of failure, than to face it head on…and that is the issue. We truly fear that if we face all that we must do, all that we can do and want to do, then we shall be so overwhelmed that we shall become like headless chickens running around the yard – and what a waste of one of our precious weeks that would be!

But what can we do? The world for centuries has been filled with aids for our procrastination and emails and Social Media just took it to a whole new level. But Mr. Burkeman gives us some hope. Procrastination is unavoidable, though we can get better at ignoring the right things. He points out that ‘FOMO’ – ‘Fear Of Missing Out’ for example, is “only debilitating if you fail to realise that missing out is basically guaranteed in life”, the inevitable consequence of one path chosen over another (here). If we take FOMO into our businesses, this can often cause serious problems. ‘I manufacture pink widgets’…and the first customer into my shop asks for a blue one – “Of course we can make those”, the next customer a Red Widget and so on until your shop is full of all the colours, yet only one sale in each! FOMO is like a dog chasing its tail!

This FOMO coupled with Social Media (that feeds our fears on a daily basis) means that (as Mr. Burkeman continues), “once the attention economy (basically Social Media) has rendered you sufficiently distracted, or annoyed, or on edge, it becomes easy to assume that this is just what life these days feels like. In TS Eliot’s words, we are “distracted from distraction by distraction””. Yet it is the pain we feel knowing that we have so little time, in fact is the aspect that simply makes it worse – or multiplies exponentially the effect within us.

The main point he makes is that what we think of as distractions aren’t actually the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just “the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation”. The limitation of time.

…so embrace this limitation. Life is what it is, we have constant demands on our time. He adds: “…the most effective way to sap distraction of its power is to stop expecting things to be otherwise…”.

As an example, in learning to meditate, one immediately is confronted by the incredible power of the mind, how it flits from one thought to another, from one distraction to the other and how difficult it is to control this. This is why it is so difficult for so many to do. To fight it simply does not work – to yell ‘Concentrate!’ Creates the opposite effect! In fact it is only when one relaxes, turns to a mantra and the mind starts to drift with the melodic sound, that suddenly the mind clears. Much like a sportswoman ‘in the zone’, the mind is clear and focus appears, so it is with meditation. 

“Some Zen Buddhists hold that the entirety of human suffering can be boiled down to this effort to resist paying full attention to the way things are going, because we wish they were going differently (“This shouldn’t be happening!”), or because we wish we felt more in control of the process. There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you’ll never be liberated. You don’t get to dictate the course of events. And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.” OB.

We cannot control everything in our own and in our business lives, we cannot stop the magnetic pull towards procrastination, towards distraction, the flight from the fear of finite time, but recognizing this is a start. A start to finding Focus, to finding the Zone. Not easy, after all we are only human, but even that admittance is in itself a start.

Stay safe.



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Navalayo Osembo, a Kenyan running shoe brand-builder with a big vision — Lionesses of Africa

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Lioness Weekender was delighted to chat to Navalayo Osembo this month to learn more about what it takes to build a proudly Made In Kenya running shoe brand, and her aspirations for the future.

What does your company do?

Enda is bringing together world-class shoe designers, developers, and Kenyan athletes to create performance running shoes that capture the skills and experience of Kenyan athletes. We aim to produce these shoes as ethically as possible in Kenya and sell them around the world. Through Kenyan production, global sales, and persistent storytelling, Enda Athletic provides a means through which runners globally can connect to Kenyan running greatness. We also greatly increase the amount Kenya benefits from its running reputation in three ways: job creation, investing a share of our revenues in communities, and building Kenya’s reputation to include a place that makes great products.

What inspired you to start your company?

I’d say Enda is a series of many events that kind of just led into one point. I’ve always been interested in sports and once upon a time I started a sports academy in Bungoma that was focusing on helping kids who have really great talent in sports but without the economic background to support their talents – the program basically intended to put them in a place where they can just focus on being their best. That experience, mixed with my experience in international development forced me to start thinking about how we can use sports as a tool for development.

Why should anyone use your service or product?

Enda creates original men’s and women’s running footwear and apparel made in Kenya, for sale under its branded name, on both online retail and wholesale to running and athletic retailers. As a made-in-Kenya running shoe, Enda possesses a unique brand and selling point that no existing competitor can match. Furthermore, we will continually seek to lead the marketing in sustainable and ethical business practices. Beyond these aspects of the brand story, our shoes will also possess a subtle Kenyan design aesthetic and will have their technical performance informed and evaluated by world-class Kenyan athletes. In both individual products and product line planning, we have staked out a unique viewpoint of making running shoes to match the gait and training of Kenyan athletes. 

In product terms, this means shoes that are designed to reward a natural midfoot strike, increase proprioception, and move with the foot through metatarsal flexion. In terms of product line, this means that each shoe is designed for a specific part of an athlete’s training schedule. While most brands are focused on the right individual shoe for a runner, we recognize that athletes with a varied training schedule need different tools, so match the tools to serve the purpose. Visually the shoes are still visually identifiable as a technical running shoe, yet are minimalist enough in their design that they could easily serve as a fashion shoe as well. While most brands communicate technology through their design, we pride ourselves on communicating culture resulting in a clean and appealing aesthetic.

Tell us a little about your team

We have a diverse team consisting of employees and independent contractors spread over Kenya, Asia, and the United States. Each team member and department is responsible for specific roles, e.g., operations design, supply chain etc.

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

Prior to founding Enda, my entrepreneurial journey was a rocky one. I had tried several other businesses and had seen mixed results; some grew, and others were subject to seasonal changes. I tried farming, fashion, corporate social responsibility consulting etc. The business that I was running just before Enda was a tennis academy that I had established in Bungoma, Western Kenya.

What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?

My ultimate vision is for Enda to be one of the top three running shoe brands globally, to be Africa’s cultural shoe brand, to be a source of employment for thousands of people and an inspiration for millions.

What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?

The impact that we make. Our impact in Kenya involves creating jobs directly through our company and contractors, and indirectly in the supply chain. Additionally, 2% of our revenues go to community projects. So far, we have supported a community-based organization in Nairobi’s Korogocho slums that teaches life skills through sports, an NGO in Nandi County that buys livestock for disadvantaged women to help them earn a livelihood, and most recently, an organization in Kenya’s coast that empowers girls through sports. We have also given direct cash grants to athletes. I am excited about the future because we have the capacity to create an impact for so many more people.

What’s the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?

Just start. There is tremendous value in starting the journey. It is only when you start that you will be motivated to seek the right people and resources to help you grow. Without starting, it remains just another idea in your head. Africa needs more SMEs, and more so, more women in business. You owe yourself and the continent a chance so go ahead and get started.

To find out more about the Enda brand and its business story, contact Navalayo Osembo, co-founder of Enda, via email: navalayo@endarunning.com

Visit the Enda website and social media pages to learn more about the Enda range of running shoes: www.endasportswear.com

TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | YOUTUBE





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Daniela Samakosky, a South African artisan footwear manufacturer committed to slow fashion — Lionesses of Africa

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Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And, do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

Entrepreneurship runs in my veins. My father had to pivot his skills once the preference for mass-made shoes hit the market in the 1970s. His once thriving small business fell apart. He turned to upholstery and successfully built another business. From Italian Shoemaker he became Italian Trimmers. His tenacity and perseverance permeated life and forms the backbone of my sense of knowing what it takes to be an entrepreneur. It is often a lonely journey, often very challenging, but builds strength of character. The highs and lows become a part of daily life and begin to feel “comfortable”. I approach each day with renewed vigour, placing yesterday into experience and today as opportunity. SHOW UP EVERYDAY. Small steps eventually lead to a leap.

What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?

To grow a LOVE BRAND. This is a brand based on authenticity, sustainability, love local, support local, grow local, entrepreneurship and artisanal upliftment. The brand vision is one of synergy, reviving traditional skill, pride in the process, beautiful quality products. I believe that the abundance of creative talent in our splendid land, South Africa, can and should drive employment opportunities. Creative businesses in which people can grow and thrive while uplifting our economy. A win-win view as part of the solution to unemployment and poverty.

What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?

Thriving against the odds. Personal growth.
Living the dream.
Creating.
Being available for my family, being flexible.
Self driven and discipline.
Striving to be part of a solution to unemployment.
Making a difference
The joy of transforming “waste” into product that is exquisite and high quality.
Living sustainably

What’s the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?

Do it.
Show up.
Network.
Be bold in the sense of telling your story….take pride in your abilities whatever they are. Intelligence is made up of many different aspects not only intellectual. Some are extraordinarily gifted emotionally…others practically. Take pride in your natural abilities and develop new skills . Use time efficiently and make time for personal care! Dare to leap.

Contact or follow Walk The Talk Africa

WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | EMAIL daniela@walkthetalkafrica.com





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Fátima Suliman, a Mozambican entrepreneur turning a passion for cookie-making into a successful business — Lionesses of Africa

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What inspired you to start your company?

Growing up I always enjoyed baking. I started to bake when I was 12. At the time, my aunt had a cake business and I used to always help her decorate. When I was 19 years old I decided to pursue my dream of baking and decided to take small orders, but I never realized I would go in a whole other direction. When I tried macarons for the first time I decided to bake them too, and when I saw the science behind baking just a single macaron it made me go after it even more. And the passion for French pastry just came naturally behind it.

Why should anyone use your service or product?

We always strive to make every order unique. And it becomes easier when you sell something almost no-one does. As we expand our business to specializing in French pastry we are looking forward to having new products and something different, so when people look for something unique they go straight to us.

Tell us a little about your team

There is me, Fátima Suliman, and I am the founder and CEO of Cookie world. I work alongside my sister, Sarah Suliman, who is my rock and always there for me, helping in every aspect possible. It’s safe to say that Sarah is an indispensable and very important member of our team.

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

We started as something very small. We used to bake regular tea cookies. Then we had an amazing idea of making personalized bonbon cookies and it became famous almost instantly. We had orders every day. But when many people decided to make the same thing it was not unique anymore. It felt like fate when at the same time we tried macarons for the first time and it was amazing. And since it was something new here we decided to give it a go. But it was not so easy because the science behind it is pretty big. Maybe that pushed us even more to go for it. And after we nailed it, the passion for French pastry just came naturally. As for our love for sugar cookies that came a long time ago. We decided to explore that market even more because it was something new too here.  A long story short, we really like to bring new things and be unique. We do come from an entrepreneurial background but not in the same area.



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A Groundbreaking Approach to Goal Setting by Payal Kadakia — Lionesses of Africa

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Book Review

Goal-setting is something that every woman entrepreneur needs to do as part of her business building journey, but in author and entrepreneur Payal Kadakia’s new book LifePass, she introduces a whole new approach to not just setting goals but reaching them too.

In her new book, LifePass, Payal Kadakia, the founder of ClassPass, the revolutionary fitness and wellness platform, shares her unique method of goal setting that will help you hone in on your feelings, screen out unnecessary distractions, and live a successful and fulfilling life based on your deepest desires. When Payal let go of the pressure to achieve a traditional kind of success, she tuned in to her calling and built ClassPass into a multi-million pound company. In LifePass, she shares her unique insights as to how she changed her approach to not just business, but also her life. 

In LifePass, you will learn how to focus on what’s meaningful to you; how to embrace all parts of your identity; how to push past expectations to hear your own voice; how to turn failure into learning opportunities; how to make money work for you, instead of working for it; how to manage your time guilt-free; how to build a supportive tribe of people around you; and importantly, how to set actionable goals aligned to your dream.

Payal’s new book is a blueprint for not just setting goals, but for creating a meaningful and distraction free life that helps you to realize them and live the life you dream of.

Author Quotes

Being an entrepreneur is basically about how you innovate. 

You have to understand what’s going on with the world around you, and adapt to that to keep achieving your mission.

When it gets hard and you hit a place where you have to make a right or a left, you have to know where you actually set out to go in the first place.

About the author

Payal Kadakia is the founder of the revolutionary fitness and wellness platform, ClassPass, which provides people access to the best boutique fitness classes, gyms, and wellness experiences around the world. ClassPass connects you to classes and appointments in 30 countries worldwide, revolutionizing the fitness and wellness industry by bringing together the world’s best classes and experiences into one app. Payal is also the founder and artistic director of the Sa Dance Company, dedicated to expressing Indian American identity. Payal is frequently featured in major news outlets and has been listed among Fast Company‘s 100 Most Creative People, and was named to Fortune‘s 40 under 40 list. She holds a Bachelor of Science from MIT. Payal lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

www.classpass.com



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Adbot launches campaign to offer 1000 Lionesses of Africa members 1000 FREE Google Ads campaigns — Lionesses of Africa

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Lioness Radio / The Business of Funding Podcast Ep.3

There are 3.5 million searches a day on Google. If your business is not advertising on Google you don’t exist to online customers. That is why Lionesses of Africa is collaborating with Adbot to change this. Adbot is giving away 1000 FREE Google ads campaigns to 1000 women business owners, each to the value of R1000. The campaign runs until 31 January 2022.

Adbot ceo Michelle Geere says, “Adbot aims to help every SME owner in Africa advertise online successfully. We believe this effort will support SME owners by giving them access to new markets which in turn will grow their business. We know the barrier to entry usually is budget and knowledge of how to manage these complex platforms. That’s why we at Adbot would like to offer 1000 Lionesses of Africa members 1000 FREE Google Ads campaigns, to the value of R1000.

It is very simple. All you have to do is

  1. Click here https://promo.adbot.co.za/loa/

  2. Add your email and cellphone number

  3. Verify that your email is correct by clicking on the email sent by Adbot

  4. Fill in some detail about your business and add keywords.

  5. And you are live!

  6. If you are stuck please WhatsApp the Adbot team on +27 78 573 7341

Deadline to apply is 31 January 2022.

This offer is perfectly suited to companies in the seeding phase of their business journey where they are still testing platforms and markets. This campaign is the most effective for entrepreneurs who have done their own Google Ads or paid someone to do it before. For the simple reason that they are able to measure past performance with the free campaign.

Adbot was introduced to Lionesses of Africa by its impact partner, Enygma Ventures, the private investment fund focused on investing in women-led businesses in Southern and East Africa, co-founded by Sarah and Jacob Dusek. Enygma Ventures partners with Lionesses of Africa to produce The Business of Funding Podcast. To listen to Episode 3 and hear from Sarah and Adbot ceo, Michelle Geere, click here: 



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A new Ford bakkie is here! – African Farming

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With V6 diesel power, a wider load bay, improved off-road capability and better ride quality, the first new Ranger in a decade has a lot to get a farmer excited. Here is what we know.

Rejoice, Ford Ranger fan. No longer will you have to feel inadequate about the V6 badge on the VW Amarok. The three-litre V6 turbodiesel in the new high-level Ranger will be a Ford engine. Even though the new Amarok and Ranger are both built by Ford, the Blue Oval says the engine is its own and not VW’s. Ford hasn’t revealed anything, but it will likely be the engine from the Ford F-150 and Land Rover Discovery.

This unit develops at least 186kW and 600Nm, comparing favourably to the Amarok’s 190kW and 580Nm. It also betters the most powerful engine in the existing Ranger, the 157kW and 500Nm twin-turbo two-litre diesel. Ford will keep this engine, as well as the single-turbo two-litre.

The Ford Mustang’s four-cylinder 2.3-litre turbo petrol (230kW; 475Nm) will also find its way into some Rangers, but the Raptor will use a turbocharged petrol V6. Ford is keeping the existing ten- and six-speed automatic gearboxes, but the former gets a new torque converter. A six-speed manual gearbox will still be available in some Rangers.

The new Ranger is wider, which means the load box can fit a pallet. The cabin is larger and redesigned for more comfort, better technology and storage space. There are new customisable digital instruments and a 10” or 12” screen (depending on the grade) in the centre of the front panel.

It responds to adjustments to the six driving modes, a feature previously exclusive to the Raptor. The screen also displays off-road info and navigation. It’s linked to a 360-degree camera to make parking easy and to assist when negotiating off-road obstacles.

Owners can control the new exterior-zone lighting system via the touchscreen or the Ford app. Moreover, the engine compartment has room for a second battery.

Top-spec Rangers also get smart ‘matrix’ LED headlights that can deactivate sections of the beams, enabling the driver to see clearly on either side of a vehicle in front of him, without blinding the other driver. Thanks to an embedded modem, the software can be updated over the internet, making a trip to the workshop unnecessary.

The Ranger’s wheelbase has increased by 50mm, allowing it to scale bigger obstacles. The dampers have been moved outside of the chassis for better wheel articulation and a comfier ride. Two kinds of four-wheel drive systems will be on offer. One will be similar to VW’s 4Motion or Mitsubishi’s Super Select II.

This means a centre diff allows four-wheel drive on tar roads – other 4×4 Rangers will only allow four-wheel drive on loose surfaces. Much about the new Ranger is still unknown, but for Ford fans, the double-cab’s exterior design and the V6 engines are just about all that matter. Hopefully the upgraded transmissions can handle all that extra torque.



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Solomon Khumbula – African Farming

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TOMATOES

Solomon Khumbula, Makhado, Limpopo

We grow tomatoes and supply Firefly, one of the largest retailers in our town. Firefly packages our produce and sells it in its shops. We have just finished planting our HTX 14 tomato variety.

The seedlings come from WD Seedlings in Tzaneen. We use this variety because of its ability to tolerate the extreme heat in Makhado. It’s also a disease-resistant variety that needs very little pesticide spraying to grow well.

We get the seedlings when they are six weeks old and plant them immediately. We plant an area of 5ha to tomatoes, at a plant population of 20 000 plants per hectare. We ran the soil tests before we started the land preparation and they showed that parts of our farm needed liming, as some of the soil was too acidic.

We applied lime during soil preparation, after we had ploughed and disced and before we ridged. Because we try to keep our soil healthy and grow our crops sustainably, we only use organic matter such as chicken manure to fertilise our tomatoes.

We buy the chicken manure from local smallholder farmers and use about a handful per plant at planting. After that we follow our spraying and irrigation programme for about three months when we harvest. We run a weekly spraying programme for pests until harvesting – this helps us to produce quality tomatoes.

We use Warlock 19.2 EC for caterpillars, cutworm and aphids from the seedling phase, and Allice 20 SP from Week 1 to Week 4. From Week 5 until harvesting we spray with methyl parathion, an organophosphate insecticide.



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Beef farmers’ day in Polokwane is a must – African Farming

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Cattle farming runs in the blood of many South Africans, with an astonishing 40% of cattle managed by black communal farmers. 

These herds present one of the biggest opportunities in the South African economy, especially in the light of growing beef exports, which could double the commercial price of beef. 

It’s with this wonderful opportunity in mind, that African Farming, a proud print, digital and TV brand extension of the agricultural magazine Landbouweekblad, will be hosting a beef farmers’ day on Monday 7 February at the Pietersburg Auction Centre at the Polokwane Show Grounds (R101). The event will start at 08:30.

Speakers include Patrick Sekwatlakwatla, head of transformation at the Sernick Group, Dr Baldwin Nengovhela, scientific manager at the South African Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), veterinarian Dr Faffa Malan and experts from Vleissentraal and Elanco.

Come and listen to them explain how small changes to your operation – from breeding to selling on auctions – can have a big impact on your bottom line. 

Network with fellow farmers while enjoying a meal, and let’s build more profitable businesses together, be they emergent, or seasoned commercial operations!

Tickets cost only R50 and include lunch and a goody bag and are available at qkt.io/uvvBLj.

For more information contact events@landbou.com.

Covid-19 protocols will be strictly adhered to. 

Download the programme here.



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