In the Southern African country of Zambia, the number of successful female entrepreneurs continue to surge as time goes by.
According to recent stats, 51% of the country’s entrepreneurs are women and they continue to raise the bar high in a country where its natural resources are still to be fully exploited.
Amongst the powerful and innovative women in the country who’re not letting their entrepreneurial guard down, is Monica Musonda, a legal practitioner who resigned from her job to fully focus on entrepreneurship.
Monica Musonda, 48, is the founder and CEO of Java Foods, a unique Zambian-owned food manufacturing brand that has set the pace for other local businesses to follow.
In a continent like Africa, where most businesses are owned by foreigners or are multinationals, many startups or small business owners struggle to live up to expectation, reason why it is important highlight business who’ve survived or are surviving the turbulent and harsh African entrepreneurial ecosystem.
When she graduated with a Bachelor Of Law degree from the University of Zambia, she relocated abroad to further her studies in the University of London, where she acquired her Masters degree. After acquiring her second degree, she would go on to work as a cooperate attorney for some reputable companies across the world, including the renowned Dangote conpany, which happened to be her last job, which she resigned to embark on her own business journey.
According to her, her entrepreneurial journey began immediately after she traveled to her country Zambia with her then boss Dangote who had gone to extend his Dangote brand in Zambia and questioned why almost every business in the country was foreign. Motivated by Dangote, she would go on to resign from her well-paid job to create her Food processing company – Java Foods in 2012.
Monica, has over the years been talking about the challenges entrepreneurs go through in Africa most especially as a woman. She remarks that seeing her brand succeed didn’t come by some guess work or some wishful thinking. The challenges of getting good machinery for processing, readily available skilled labor and raising capital to sustain the business, are enormous.
Java Foods, which started by employing the services of Chinese companies to process for them, now produces in Lusaka, Zambia, which only shows how far they have come. They depended on this Chinese contractors to process and packaged instant noodles under the Java Foods brand.
Having a dual-qualification as an English solicitor and advocate with over 15 years of experience, are qualities which have helped tremendously in scaling her business via pitchings, partnerships and other endeavors.
With a focus on making nutritious products using local ingredients that are affordable, the company can now boast of about 19 full-time employees, three product types which are highly consumed locally. In addition to its top-selling eeZee Instant Noodles, Java Foods sells locally sourced, locally manufactured eeZee Supa Cereal, a fortified instant cereal.
Women like Monica Musonda are waving the Zambian flag quite high with their entrepreneurial successes and it’s imperative to echoe these kind of works which could only serve as a motivation to other passionate women to delve into this sector.
