Young UB Student Finds Gold In Green Energy

Cavin Kanoko | Monday September 14, 2020 15:01

But she is a proverbial dynamite, already brimming with big ideas about how to assist her beloved Botswana diversify her economy.

Besides the official Setswana and English, and any other language she may have a grasp of, she also speaks renewable energy push, her hope of making her mark.

A fourth year Urban and Regional Planning student in the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at the University of Botswana (UB), Ntshiwa is the founder of an organic briquette manufacturing company. Her company produces briquettes from organic waste, industrial sawdust as well as agricultural waste.

She expects her product to be able to mitigate the impact of climate change in Botswana given its potential to reduce deforestation, generate renewable energy by promoting environmentally friendly ways of disposing waste.

Ntshiwa explains to BusinessMonitor she decided to venture into the sustainable resources sector as a way of contributing to the efforts by various entities in the country to diversify the economy, which is dependent on mining.

“Sustainable energy is not a very much explored industry as our country is very reliant on a limited amount of resources such as diamonds and beef to sustain the economy” she highlights.

Ntshiwa adds that green energy can be turned into a viable economic activity that could in the future make a huge contribution to the economy.

Currently, she has scaled down production, after halting the company’s expansion plans due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ntshiwa’s project was chosen as the winner of this year’s Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) and Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) University Challenge.

She became the first female to walk away with the pot of gold worth P350, 000, which she ploughed back into the company as a startup capital geared towards the expansion and commercialisation of her project.

To achieve the feat, Ntshiwa beat 218 other applicants who submitted their proposals for this year’s initiative.

Ntshiwa relishes present challenges, but according to her, the market is good as she is currently focused on rural villages, starting with her own place of origin where she actually makes the briquettes.

Ntshiwa also said that she is looking to grow the company if conditions allow her so that she supplies a larger market.

Like other businesspeople in the country, her company faces a number of difficulties which include lack of access to land.

She says the company is facing a challenge of land for expansion as plans to procure land were halted by the COVID-19 outbreak.

However, Ntshiwa is optimistic that she will be able to acquire land in the near future. She is also working with her partners to ensure that the company gets back on track with their plans for expansion.

Speaking of her experience as an entrepreneur Ntshiwa points out that she has never had any formal education on how to run a business, but she got herself a mentor who guided her to start her own company.

She also emphasised the importance of partnerships in businesses, saying they can help in one’s success business.