A young entrepreneur’s venture into a business that is not without challenges – and solutions.

For Patrick Kuyokwa, bananas mean more than business. He is a 29-year-young entrepreneur from Mzuzu in northern Malawi. Together with two of his friends, he runs Agricentre enterprise, where he produces bananas for consumers around the city and supports local farmers through banana propagation. This comes at a crucial time – 80% of banana producers in the country are facing shortages due to Banana Bunchy Top Disease that is killing off the plant.

Can you briefly describe the journey of your business?

Our major challenge is that productivity is very low if we only rely on rain-fed agriculture. We can only produce once a year, during rainy season. We took part in a startup competition by the Malawian University LUANAR and giz, where our small enterprise received business coaching, training on financial management and support to adhere to the legal environment. We then competed against other founders’ business ideas – and won the first price, which was a subsidy for material.

That was the game changer for us, as we could invest in irrigation equipment. We now produce all year round. The production and our income doubled – creating more and better jobs in the company. As next steps, we plan to expand our production from 2 to 5 hectares. Once established, we aim to help producers by providing them with laboratory-based, virus-free suckers – this helps them to increase their productivity and to bring our business to the next level. For this, we need a controlled environment where we can sterilize the equipment to be able to propagate even the smallest kind of tissues.

Which support was most crucial in this journey?

Within the startup competition, the networking and pitching sessions were the most crucial in the learning journey for us, they were a real eye-opener. This gave us a chance to exchange ideas with other entrepreneurs who also offered advice based on their experiences. People explained what worked for them, and in that sense, allowed us to learn from each other.

What does it still need to create productive jobs for a growing youth population in Malawi?

For youth in Malawi to lead healthy and productive lives, skills continue to be a key requirement in the long-term – they need to be practical both as an entrepreneur or an employee. The other challenge is access to finance through loans, equity, and grants. Only then, small businesses can grow viably – creating value added and productive employment towards the future.