From unemployed graduate to top olive oil entrepreneur
Loyiso Manga has turned his business skills and love of agriculture into a hugely successful olive oil business – Ubuntu Olive Oil – the first black-owned olive oil company in South Africa.
Ubuntu Olive Oil has won a 2019 SA Olive Award, and a Gold Award at the World Olive Oil competition.
However, it was not always smooth sailing for Manga, and his passion and determination to create something authentically South African drove him to overcome obstacles that threatened to destroy his plans.
In an interview with Newsday, the entrepreneur said that he had always had big plans for his future.
“I grew up in a kind of agricultural space, it wasn’t a farm, but my grandmother had cattle and sheep, and she planted vegetables in our township in Grahamstown,” he said. “And she was also into business.”
This experience shaped Manga, and he calls agriculture his “first love”. Manga attended Grey High School in Port Elizabeth and Sterling High School in East London.
As a bright young adult with big dreams, Manga then went on to pursue a higher education.
He obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in Management from Helderberg College of Higher Education in Somerset West, and in Honours Degree in Business Administration Management.
“I was the president of the business club in my second year of university. I was, in my third year, president of the Student Representative Council (SRC), so by my fourth year, I’d accomplished basically everything. I’d slaughtered all the dragons!” he said.
However, when Manga graduated from university in 2010, ready to begin a career, he faced a problem that all too many young South Africans experience: despite his impressive qualifications, he couldn’t find employment.
“I mean, I know they talk about a job crisis now, but this was back in 2010, and I was unemployed two years after I had graduated with an honours degree,” he said.
“So I think it just speaks to the writing on the wall that was there, and the challenges that brilliant people face,” he said. He added that there is an obsession among South Africans of wanting to be employed.
A bold leap of faith
It was this obsession with having a stable job that led Manga to accept a position as a call centre agent in Cape Town.
While working in a cubicle, as he describes, Manga grew frustrated. “I just had a feeling that I could do much more,” he said.
He said that after his achievements at school and university, he felt he was wasting his potential. “I wanted to be a man of value, I wanted to be a man of legacy,” he said.
“Sometimes life beats you up in a way that you end up coming back to yourself, and to your talents and to your brilliance,” He said.
Manga decided to take the plunge, quit his job at the call centre and return to his first love: agriculture.
Unemployed and with no clear plan, Manga spent the next two years visiting farms throughout the Western Cape, travelling three or four hours at a time and on weekends, looking for inspiration and a potential partner.
“And then one day, I was visiting a farm, and I saw that the trees were different, and I asked the farmer, ‘What is this?’ and he said, ‘these are olives’ and he said to me ‘if I was young, black, and as charasmatic as you are, I’d go into the olive oil industry’.”
“The next day I called SA Olive, and that was it,” he said. He began by bottling olive oil in his garage.
Manga has now been hailed as a trailblazer in the agricultural sector, he credits his success to his determination.
“I travel a lot, I get out there and try to network, so I think a part of it is just me getting out there and pushing my brand, knocking on doors and saying ‘please support us.’”
A bottle that screams “Africa”
He said there are other black South African agriculture businesses who have come after him, but working in the industry is “not a joke.”
“The people, the suppliers, the farmers, are not the easiest people to deal with. I’ve managed over the last five or six years to navigate myself and earn the respect of the guys who now supply me,” he said.
Manga has developed the distinct, South African olive oil brand, Ubuntu Olive Oil, with a particular image to capture South African’s attention and make it clear that this is a local product.
“If you’ve seen it, you can see it is a descendant of Africa, that is one things we wanted to do differently – our labelling,” he said.
“Because the labelling for olive oil is quite boring, it’s always a grandmother and an olive tree, it’s just corny,” he said.
The goal for designing his brand was that people would walk past it on the shelf and know that it is a local, vibrant brand, with its bright red, patterned label.
He said he is in a position where he is forced to rely on his competitors for olives, but has plans to soon own the first black-owned olive farm in the history of South Africa.
“This would mean that we secure our own source of olive oil,” he said, “our point of arrival will be when we get our own farm, so that people can come to our estate, have wine tastings, olive oil tastings, weddings, baby showers, that is the ultimate goal,” he said.
More photos from Ubuntu Olive Oil
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