Meet Leena Sindano The Namibian Entrepreneur Impacting Lives With The ‘Miracle Tree’

More than 60 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is smallholder farmers, and about 23 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP comes from agriculture. Yet, Africa’s full agricultural potential remains untapped.
Leena Sindano is a Namibian agriculture entrepreneur who founded Chizango Trading cc in 2016. The company, deals in manufacturing Moringa oleifera products from the moringa tree; processing the Moringa oleifera leaves into powder, capsules, tea & the seeds into oil and cosmetics. It markets the products under the brand name ‘Organic Moringa Namibia’.

Chizango Trading cc won the best innovative idea at the MSME conference 2017 hosted by ABC Academy & KONARD. A Member of the Namibian Network of the Cosmetics Industry (NANCI) and a member of African Woman Agribusiness Network. The company represented Namibia in the African Moringa working group. In 2019, Leena was Invited as guest speaker at the ‘Agri4youth Conference’ in Windhoek to inspire other youth to join the agriculture industry.

 What inspired you to start Organic Moringa Namibia?

I was inspired by my parents to start the business in 2016 when I was unemployed. The super-crop known as Moringa ‘the miracle tree,’ was wisely being used at the time in my home town Rundu by elders mostly those suffering from chronic diseases, my parents inclusive, because of its many health benefits. Moringa oleifera is packed with a lot of nutrients, omega 3, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory that helps with the body immune system, working on every part of the organs in the body and improves the health and wellness of people.
I embarked on doing a research on Moringa oleifera plant health benefits and products that can be produced from the tree. I completed the project proposal after a month and started looking for funds. In the same month I got selected to attend the YALI programme sponsored by the United states of America government that requires you to have a business idea to practice on and write a business plan at the end. I continued with the moringa oleifera project. However, two weeks before the programme came to an end, I got a job offer but it did not stop me from continuing my project. I was thankful to God because now I could have my own source of income to fund my project. While in South Africa, I met a woman selling various moringa oleifera products at a mall, I collected some brochure to bring home and copy some information for my awareness. My full-time job is in the capital city and that was an opportunity for me to sell Moringa products as few people knew about the plant and had access to the plant. My parents have grown few moringa oleifera trees at their farm, they assist me with harvesting the leaves and seeds, as well as processing the powder. I started off with just packaging moringa oleifera leaf powder and the dry leaves, now I hand make the capsules, pressing oil from the seeds and various Moringa tea. Currently I have 3 farmers supplying me with the moringa oleifera leaves and seeds. I want to increase the number to 100 farmers by training more farmers to provide me with quality moringa oleifera leaves and seeds. The products are now being sold nationwide using courier service.

 While starting out, what strategies did you put in place for resource mobilization, growth and visibility?

I started off with my own savings to buy what I could afford, which was the packaging of the leaf powder and dry leaves, since raw materials were available at my parents’ farm and did not cost me anything, reinvested all the profit into the business. I managed to buy few equipment that I am using in the business. I invested in promotion and advertisement through opening a Facebook page where I post about the health benefits of Moringa Oleifera. I also relied on Newspaper advertisement and attending flea markets every first Saturday of the month. Through the flea markets in 2016, I was approached by a number of newspaper and magazine journalists to have me and my products featured in article about Moringa. This boosted my business more because people came to know about Moringa oleifera, my Facebook and the products that I produce.

 What has been the greatest challenge(s) Organic Moringa Namibia has faced and how did you overcome it (them)?

• Educating people about the Moringa oleifera tree and its health benefits: Majority of the customers knew nothing about it so I had to repeat the same thing to many customers in a day. I was basically like a call center for information sharing, it was not easy as you have to give respect to every customer and give them what they want. Sometimes they don’t support your business, but they just want the information because they have the plant and lack knowledge about it on its benefits. The social media pages and newspaper articles helped a lot to educate many people at once.
• Lack of proper packaging made us loose customers at the market as they were not encouraged to buy because the packaging was not attractive. I did a bit of study on where to get proper packaging and when I gathered enough funds, I managed to improve the packaging. Because of the high concentration of nutrients of Moringa Oleifera, it needs to be packaged in a certain way in order to preserve the nutrients under sunlight exposure.

• Inadequate funds to buy automatic packaging machine. However, with my fulltime job salary, I managed to get some manual machine that I’m using for the small-scale production, and working on getting automatic machine as the demand has grown.

• Certification hiccups: Moringa is categorized as a superfood as it is grown in an organic way so one is required to get an organic certificate to claim that it is organic, which is very expensive to obtain. However, some companies have accepted the products without the organic certifications and majority of the customers are satisfied with the products.

 What has been the key to your success as Organic Moringa Namibia??

Awareness to educate people about the products, marketing on social media, newspapers and flea markets, and mostly entering into competitions. They always come with benefits like learning from others and trainings during or after the completion.

What are some of the best sales strategies you have employed to land big clients?

• Never get tired to Market your business, especially at large gatherings like business conferences and workshops with potential buyers. Attend as many as you can afford and mostly, take every opportunity they offer.
• Have quality packaging that will attract buyers.
• Know your business and what you are selling to the people.
• Be flexible and available always for your clients.
• Have proper business contact details.
• Be part of associations and networks that will expose you to bigger markets. Through networks and associations, I am part of, I have marketed my products in South Africa and Germany.

How do you develop and maintain excellent relationships with your regular clients?

I save their contact details so I can address them by their names and ensure that I build a relationship with them as I don’t have a fixed shop to sell my products. I sell them from home and always move with some in the boot of my car and make door-to-door deliveries. Also, when they purchase many products, I give them gifts inform of a new product I am launching or a product they have not used before and I want to introduce them to.

Growth is usually accompanied by some awkward stumbles. What sort of mistakes have you made as Organic Moringa Namibia has grown? How did you overcome such mistakes?

When doing business, you need to focus in all areas of your business. Stock taking of your products to know what is available, the raw material available and the packaging if you have enough while at the same time marketing the business. Managing a company when you don’t have fulltime employed workers and managing all the company division, at some point I was drowned into product marketing and awareness without checking if I had enough raw materials, then I received a large order and you can not disappoint the customer or make them wait. Processing moringa leaves from harvest, drying and grinding into powder takes 4-5 days when not using the drying machine, plus an extra day to send from Rundu to Windhoek (the capital city), then I need a day to package the products. It cost me extra to look for the raw material as I did not have enough with me in stock, unexpected cost that was not budgeted for.

What advice do you have for aspiring and agro processing business founders? 

• Start the business with what ever is available and the little funds that you have. Love what you are doing and when you stumble upon challenges in business it will not discourage you but motivate you to improve on it.

• Doing an agribusiness doesn’t mean you have to be the farmer and the processor at the same time, you can support the farmers that are already producing and you can process them into final products.

• If you want to grow your own crops but lack land, make use of your family land and start paying them later when your business break-even. Many of us have our parents growing stable food in one season, before we can use the land to grow our crops during their off seasons or use a small portion of the land to begin with.

• Be your own teacher to learn: Make use of internet and attending business workshops, conferences and classes. It does not necessarily require you to spend money, some are sponsored and some are free to attend.

• I do not have a background as a botanist but I taught myself about Moringa oleifera plant, I don’t have background in product development but I’m currently producing products, it’s because of the love I have for agriculture which gave me the desire to do what I do, the end results motivate me to aim even higher, to have my products on international market.

• Have faith in yourself and what you do while dreaming big: Always aim big by focusing on one thing at a time, achieve it and move on to the next one. We all started small and grow while learning every day.

 In your opinion, what are the biggest obstacles to women’s progression in the agro processing industry and how can they overcome them? 

Lack of access to land, to either buy or inherit as woman are not always considered. Secondly access to finance, gender bias in the economic system. We can only overcome this by showing results from our work, it may not take 1 or 2 years but once you have end results that is demanded in the market, its convincing enough.

We need to work together by encouraging other woman to join the industry and employ more women in the business to empower each other. Personally, although my parents encouraged me to do business they were not convinced with my choice in moringa processing until I broke even in the business 3 years later and they saw good results. Now they are empowered and currently busy extending their farm to grow more moringa plants, my siblings have also started growing moringa plants so they can supply me with enough raw materials.