With the tagline ‘Food is our Currency of Connection’, Manqele sees food as a great unifier. Her business, Local Village Foods, seeks to celebrate indigenous African foods beyond just Heritage Day, and create market opportunities for the local communities, cooperatives and small-scale farmers that Local Village works closely with across the continent.

Manqele built Local Village Foods with a vision to create a network of vibrant, local African agripreneurs supplying equitably-sourced and sustainably-grown indigenous African superfoods – from teff grain from the Horn of Africa to tiger nuts from West Africa and the Southern African staple sorghum flour.

Sipamandla Manqele, founder, Local Village Foods.Sipamandla Manqele, founder, Local Village Foods.

Based in Gauteng, Local Village Foods processes, packages and distributes the products to retailers and hospitality businesses. Through its proudly African products and packaging, the company is helping to popularise African ingredients and flavours, which remain under-represented in mainstream retail.

From Bambara groundnuts, fonio grain, teff flour and dried roselle leaves, to its more recent bissap-based beverages and baobab & mango snack bars, Local Village Foods is doing the work to make African wholefoods and ingredients more accessible to a global market – driving sustainable development along the way.

SA entrepreneur drives sustainable development using African foods SA entrepreneur drives sustainable development using African foods.

Here, Manqele shares her inspiration behind the business and the journey so far.

Courtesy of Bizcommunity – read full article here.