Buyiswa Twala is a South African entrepreneur and the founder of Agrigreat Soiltech and Envirocare, an award-winning company that converts biowaste from townships into organic compost and fertilizers.
With a background that includes construction and a passion for solving real-world problems, she is working to address soil degradation and food insecurity issues in South Africa and Africa.
Through her company, she aims to promote sustainable farming practices while creating affordable, effective solutions for smallholder farmers and home growers.
Buyiswa Twala shared with Today Africa the story of Agrigreat Soiltech and Envirocare and how it all began.
Tell us more about yourself
Buyiswa Twala is a very hands-on girl. I love doing things with my hands.I love gardening, farming, but also something I think that’s really important I must mention, I love food. Okay, so I really, really love food.
And something that always touched me was finding out in the world that we all don’t have the same access to food. So hence I started working in the food security space and everything, but my love for food really came first.
I’ll even go as far as letting everyone know my favorite food is lasagna. Also I love being able to solve problems. I’m quite a problem solver. I love art and music. And I’m creative, hence you see even with the hairstyle, I have a lot of art going on there as well.
That’s basically the kind of person that Buyiswa Twala is. I’m 24, based in Johannesburg, South Africa where we get to see a lot of things, we’re exposed to things.
There’s townships, there’s suburbs, there’s fence areas, which is a great mix for me because it allowed me to see so much and understand the different inequalities of the world. And I love traveling as well. So that’s who Buyiswa Twala is.
What inspired you into going to entrepreneurship and to start your own business?
I think I was always a very ambitious person. I always wanted a little bit more out of the world. So even when I was in school, I always wanted to add extra things.
My teachers would complain all the time because we would have shows that we have to do and I would be like, let’s try and make it bigger. Let’s try and grow it and all of that.
And everyone knew me for this so when they see me raise my hand, they know it’s going down. It’s about coming up with a big idea that’s going to give us a lot of work to do.
So for me with entrepreneurship, I’ll be honest with you, I wanted to be a pilot because I have a fear of heights. So every time I’m afraid of something, I like jumping into it so that I can get over that fear.
And in 2020, when COVID happened, all of the borders were closed and I started volunteering at a non-profit organization here in South Africa, which was making school farms for children.
It was just a startup, so there was no money, there was nothing, but I ended up enjoying it a lot. Then as I was working in that agricultural space, I saw a gap in the industry and a couple of issues in the soil preparation market.
Me being me, I was like, I definitely want to solve that. So being an entrepreneur for me, I think it started with problem solving because even when you get into business, they tell you it’s all about solving a problem.
There’s a certain problem you need to solve. So I saw that problem and I felt that, know what, I’m going to do something about it. I want to change the way farming is done because it’s so unsustainable and it’s destroying the environment and people are not having access to food because of it.
So that really pushed me and decided to give it a try. It was very scary but I gave it a try and I think it kind of worked out so that’s how I got into becoming an entrepreneur.
Tell us more about Agrigreat Soiltech & Envirocare, your products and services
Agrigreat Soiltech & Envirocare is actually a manufacturing company where we manufacture soil aids such as compost and fertilizers, but the difference is that they are organic and they are made of organic waste.
So basically what Agrigreat does is that we take organic waste from the streets, from the townships, from dams, informal dams and all of that in places with low service delivery.
We take the bio-waste and organic waste to our site, we put it through a lot of scientific processes, which is not that much. It’s just a big industrial drying and crushing.
Then we formulate that and we look at the scientific formula of what nutrients the waste holds and what nutrients does the soil need. And then we put those together, we mix them and we have our compost and our fertilizers, which are aimed at reversing the effects of soil degradation.
Meaning that our products bring life to dead soil. We kind of created a formula which obviously we can’t share because it’s our secret recipe, but you know we created a formula that reverses the effects of soil degradation.
Our hope is to increase food security because we realized that the cost of living is extremely high and food has become extremely expensive making people lower than the middle class unable to afford food.
So for us, it was like going back and realizing where the problem stems from. And we realized that the problem is in the soil. Our soil is not able to produce a lot of food in the farming sectors anymore due to synthetic fertilizer usage and soil damage and degradation.
We thought if we’re able to restore dead soil and begin to heal it and then have it come back to life and be able to produce maximum capacity.
Then our food crisis will kind of decrease because the food prices will go down. People are gonna have more access to food and the scarcity is gonna be less. So that’s basically what aggregate does in a nutshell. Yeah, that’s what we’re all about.
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As a manufacturing company, what were the challenges that you faced when starting your business and how did you overcome them?
I will say the first one was the challenge from within. So the challenge of being scared because this is an industry that has had companies, other manufacturing companies that manufacture these products, the compost and the fertilizers.
They’ve been in the industry for over 400 years, over 200 years here in South Africa. I started this when I was like 20. You’re young, you’re coming with this idea, this concept, and you’re trying to change the entire system as well.
And also knowing that I didn’t necessarily go to school for manufacturing, I went to school for science. So now you’re trying to figure out what’s the best machinery for you to buy, which one is most easy for you to use because you’re using machinery you’ve never used before.
Imagine buying a certain machine and you’ve found that the machine is not set up for you. Now you need to set up this machine yourself and it’s just a lot going on.
So it was first really the challenge from within, overcoming the fear to actually go into something like manufacturing. Because as you know, manufacturing is a very male dominated space.
So now you’re going in there as a woman, people already have ideas about you. They have thoughts and the voices in your head are also contributing. I had to get over that.
That was the first challenge I had to get over. I had to be like, you know what? Whether or not I make it or I don’t make it, I don’t think anyone’s going to shoot me. So let me just go for it.
The worst thing anyone can say is no, no one is going to take out a gun and shoot you. If you go and say, oh, I have this product. Can you buy it? If they say no, they say no. They’re not going to put a gun to it and shoot you. So I had to get over that.
Then the second challenge was access to markets. Trying to get into the market, trying to get your product seen and heard, especially when you’re coming with something people have never seen before.
Compost made out of waste from townships with a lot of questions. So you’re saying we must stop mining. Why must we stop mining? Because you say so. Who are you to tell us that? But it kind of pushes you to be more convincing.
“I think I was always a very ambitious person. I always wanted a little bit more out of the world.”
It pushed my sales energy, and I had to learn to kind of find what makes me special, what makes my product special.
So you need to do a lot of self research and develop the product and see what is lacking and get the feedback. I overcame it by getting feedback and learning opportunities.
There’s so many opportunities for incubators and accelerators, attending those, listening to them and engaging with other entrepreneurs as well which is why I feel like your network Today Africa is so important.
Because entrepreneurs need to see this and hear this for people who are starting out. It’s programs and platforms like these that actually helped us in the beginning get to where we are. So that’s kind of how I overcame that.
How were you able to raise capital to start and run your business?
It’s so strange that at the time I had to drop out of university because my parents had run out of funds. So at that time I had come up with this idea. I’m like, this is what I want to do and there was no funds.
A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them this, but I literally went and got a job in construction. Like as a general worker, meaning you’re digging, you’re drilling holes, you’re doing all of the terrible stuff for like nine hours of your day.
You start at six o’clock in the morning and you only knock off at like 5 p.m. if there’s no overtime. I remember I started taking up a lot of overtime because I wanted to save up the funds to kind of do this.
Because it was a new idea, a new concept, there was not a lot of funding available for it and we didn’t know too much about that.
So I kind of took the initiative in my hands to like, okay, you know what’s the quickest way we’re going to accumulate funds but I have to do it, it’s getting into construction as a general worker, not even a high paying one.
Then kind of using that money to buy very small machinery, tiny little pieces here and there, a few bags for packaging and then trying to get the product out there.
When we started making profits and it’s something I always tell every entrepreneur, when you make your first profits, you can’t use them for yourself. You need to put them back in the business immediately.
So immediately when we make the first profits, then we’re able to take that money and then go further and continue buying machinery, setting up a space, setting up a waste conversion site, all of those things.
When you have that platform and you show that okay we’ve done this much work then you can start applying for the big fundings and grants that are out there in the world.
That’s basically what we did. We started on our own and then with the little profit that we made we were able to set up a space, take pictures and get footage of what we’re doing so that we can apply for bigger grants and funds.
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Have you gotten any grants or investment from the government?
More private. We were under the Bevisioneers Fellowship, which was an amazing fellowship for global change makers. And even in the beginning of the fellowship, the first thing they did was give you money for laptops and Wi-Fi.
Then there’s the scholarship fund as well. We were also funded by winning competitions, business competitions. We won the Green Superhero of the Year Award 2022. So we did that as well.
Now we’re up for more funding because obviously we’ve built our site, we have more pictures, we have work, we have clients, we have things to show for that we are up.
So we are nominated for a few grants and a few funds. We haven’t really tapped into government funding because some of those you do have to pay back.
So I don’t really want to engage in the ones that you have to pay back, not because we can’t, but because if there are ones that you don’t have to pay back and ones that you do have to pay back.
You’d rather go with the ones where you don’t have to pay back. That’s basically what we’ve been doing so far.
What marketing strategies have worked in attracting and retaining your customers?
Something I’ve learned is going on the ground. So on the ground, there’s a lot of summits, business ecosystem events, networking events and stuff like that.
Because we have a website, the question is, how do you gain traction to your website? How do you have a lot of people on your website at the time? What we did was that we went to all of these events.
If there’s a farming event, we were there. If there’s a sustainability event, we were there. Because a lot of companies hold these events as corporate social responsibility to show that they are giving back to our community.
I would go to these events, I would show up. Obviously I go in my overalls, my branding and everything. Cause when you show up in your branding, people ask, what do you do? Why are you wearing overalls?
Everyone’s wearing suits and you’re wearing overalls. It’s kind of like a standout method. You try to stand out in that way. So I would go in my overalls and they are like, what do you do?
And then I’d like, my name is Buyiswa Twala. This is what I do. We’re Agrigreat Soiltech. Sometimes it wouldn’t even be farmers but someone with a garden be like, okay, I would like to buy some fertilizer from you for my garden because of that.
And word of mouth spreads. Also just doing campaigns and partnering with other brands also helps because if another brand is doing some sustainability merger.
You also just go and invite yourself, like hey, I thought I could partner with you on this. This is what I’m bringing to the table. I will contribute two bags of fertilizer for this partnership.
Then you get exposed to different partners and you get exposed to other businesses networks, they get exposed to your networks.
And we kind of make it an ecosystem where we just share what’s going on and we market ourselves. Also, social media is good. LinkedIn is a great place and we also use the Facebook marketplace a lot. It has worked for us quite.
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How did you assemble your team to work for you and to buy into the vision and mission of Agrigreat Soiltech?
Through networking, through attending these events. I’d met other young people who were not too sure about their journey, but they just felt they wanted to be part of change because you also need to have people who align with your vision.
You need to be with people who are where we’re going. So when it came to the team, it was at an NPO’s event, I found one of our managing directors, Sallu Kama, and she was young as well, very excited, very enthusiastic, and not really certain of many things.
But I was like, hey, look, I’m assembling a team of a couple of people, this is what we’re doing, this is the goal, and the vision. We’re trying to increase food security, and she’s like, definitely, I want to be part of that.
And then I was at a school event, and I met another person, Alexa Otto, another one of our directors, and she was like, this is amazing, I want to be a part of that. All this boils down to how you pitch it to them.
I always say when I meet people and I ask them, I’m like, do you want to go down in history for changing the world? Well, come and join me. Let’s go do that. That’s what I always do, that’s my selling point.
So I did that and I found this amazing team from jazz to party. And they’re just really focused on changing the world. And also something that I do in terms of my hiring plan is that I want people to work in a way that develops them as well.
Like I said, they’re not too certain in the beginning what they want to do with their lives, but obviously they find inspiration in the work that we do, in the changes, in the times in the world that we’re changing.
Then they begin to decide, I actually think I want to personally venture on my own. I see how I can support that. I open them up to the networks that I have and I’m like.
Because I’m also okay with that. Even if someone doesn’t work for me for more than five years, I’m also okay with that because I believe they need to have their personal growth.
I think most companies love to hold on to their stuff and they’re like, this a great person. I’m going to hold you down. But while you’re holding down, you’re also suppressing them. You’re not allowing them to grow.
For me, even if it means you grow outside the brand, Agrigreat, and you grow more than that. Then I know because we’re based on impact, we will have impacted something and someone. I’m okay with that.
And that’s kind of how we assemble our team. We ask, what are your personal goals? What are you hoping to achieve one day? And in the work and the systems that we create, we align their tasks with what they want to be one day.
That’s kind of how we create our team, our strong team and I like leading by example when it comes to leadership, you don’t just tell people what you do, you do it first.
So that they can see what you’re talking about. You’re not just talking because you can’t expect people to do something that they have not seen you do as a leader and just leading with integrity and understanding.
And I always believe there’s a difference between being a boss and the leader and you need to decide which one you are. So I prefer to kind of be a leader.
How did you build systems and processes in place in your business that allow the smooth running of Agrigreat?
How I basically did that kind of really engaging with the world, engaging with what’s happening on the outside. So even the places we collect waste from, we want it to flow seamlessly.
We want the system to be integrated into whatever’s happening in that space. Hence we formed something called Agri-Bins, which are bins where people can put organic waste and it’s been made specifically for organic waste.
So even with the people that work at Agrigreat and the dreams and the goals and ambitions, it’s about connection. You connect with them and be like, okay, what do you want to be?
“There’s so many opportunities for incubators and accelerators… engaging with other entrepreneurs as well, which is why I feel like Today Africa is so important.”
You need to sit down as a leader and look at them and be like, this is what needs to be done. This is how we’re to break this task down. For example, I know Sallu is interested in partnerships and running her own non-profit organization and all of that.
So let me put her in charge of partnerships, handling the partnerships and the deals of Agrigreat Soiltech. That way, when she’s ready to start her own thing, she already has a network because she was working with them while she was here.
She has a group of people that she knows, oh no, I want to do this. I know I can hit up these people. I can contact these people because I already had a conversation with them about Agrigreat Soiltech. We have a speaking relationship.
So that’s kind of how we integrate that into our systems. We make sure that the system is flawless. We look at the tasks that need to be done and we say, okay, here you go. This is what you need to do. It will help you later.
Even in the systems of everything that we run, it’s through connection, connecting with the community. Because then you end up solving problems that people didn’t ask to be solved.
So you go, you connect with the community, you find out what’s happening here, you guys have a bio waste problem. Why do you guys have a bio waste problem? There’s no bins, there’s no one to collect our bio waste.
And even if you want to collect bio waste, it’s mixed with glasses, bottles, and papers. So then we’re able to get a solution that no, we need to put a specific bin, create a specific bin just for bio waste.
That’s how we do the systems thing. I think the beginning of creating a system is connection. Definitely connect and communicate.
How is your business doing today and what does the future look like?
What we’re doing today currently is scaling up and we’re replicating. So we have our waste conversion center in Alexandra. It’s fairly small, a little workshop that we have where we convert waste and everything.
But now we have acquired 10 acres in the province of Gauteng. So we’re going to build a big and giant waste conversion center, which we aim to convert waste from all 500 plus townships in South Africa.
And with that high influx of raw material, we want to begin exporting our products to the northern parts of Africa, the western parts of Africa, and the eastern parts of Africa.
Because we have found where food security really struggles. And it’s because of the intense mining that has happened on the soils there during colonization. So what we’re looking at is having our product being exported and having enough raw materials while cleaning up South Africa.
What we’re currently working on is creating our waste conversion center, where 500 plus townships of waste will be converted there. Also partnering with everybody in the world.
Recently, we partnered with a company called Unnati Training Academy and they train youths in solar engineering programs. We had the youths come over at our site to come and see and give them an idea of entrepreneurship, how to do sustainable entrepreneurship.
Also we’re looking at impact, we’re increasing our impact. We want everybody in the world to be a part of our story. We want to join forces with other companies so that we can really change the world.
That’s what we’re currently doing right now. And obviously applying for all of the grants, every single grant, nominated for a few of them, but that’s what we’re kind of looking at.
Also we really would love for an Agrigreat Soiltech waste conversion center to be in every country. Because in that way, it would clean up the countries, there would be less waste in the slums and also it would increase that country’s food security.
So that’s kind of our big one day goal. We take it one step at a time, but we really want to make Agrigreat Soiltech a global initiative that is helping everyone. My personal dream is that there shouldn’t be a single child or anyone who does not have access to food.
Everybody should be able to eat. That’s the biggest belief for me and that’s my personal call.
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What key lessons have you learned in your journey as an entrepreneur?
What are the key lessons that I’ve learned? A lot of them. The first one is one that I’m practicing right now. Not to procrastinate. Yeah, don’t procrastinate. Just go for it.
Like even if you’re scared or you’re worried or whatever, reaching out to someone, hey, I want to partner with you on this or that or whatever. Just go for it. Let’s do it.
And like the worst they can say is no, that is a big one that I really learned. Like the worst that someone can say is no. Sometimes you’re afraid of reaching out to bigger companies, bigger partners, all of that.
For example, if I didn’t learn the worst that they could say is no, I wouldn’t even have reached out to you because I’m like, oh no, they’re gonna like to shoot me and stuff. Instead of reaching out, go into it and try that.
Also I learned you need to show up. You don’t start immediately on the first day of being an entrepreneur. You need to get in there and do the work in the beginning.
Because in the beginning your team won’t be so big, you won’t have a lot of employees, but the work still needs to be done. And you need to prove that this concept that you have here is a concept that is working, that is real, that is true.
So how are you going to do that? You’re going to do the work yourself, even if it’s the physical labor, you do it yourself in the beginning. You need to push yourself and get that done and also make no excuses.
There’s so many things that will come and there’s challenges. Like you said, any space there’s challenges, anything that you’re doing that is good, that will benefit and grow you, there’s going to be challenges.
But how you overcome those challenges is by constantly showing up and not making excuses for them. You don’t make excuses, you just continue to show up and every time even if you fail you bounce back up and you get back in the saddle.
Like that’s something I had to learn because I was sensitive to not winning. I don’t like not winning so if I’m nominated for something and I don’t get it I would die. Like I would be like no no that’s not what I’m going to face.
But you can’t do that and I learned perseverance. You need to get in the perseverance gym and lift the perseverance weight and persevere and persevere. And eventually one day you’ll get there and also have the patience as well.
How do you handle failure and disappointment as an entrepreneur?
I’m going to be very honest with you, I don’t like lying. I start by crying, I cry about it and because I believe it’s important to deal with your feelings, don’t try and be overly positive and tell yourself, you know what, it’s fine.
If you’re feeling sad, you’re feeling sad, it’s okay, you’re a human, it’s natural. Your heart is broken, accept that, take that emotion, deal with it, you are disappointed, it’s fine.
As soon as I’m done dealing with that emotion, I begin to assess the situation and also kind of account for it and see where I account and see, okay, what could I have done better? Where could I have improved myself? And what did I learn from this situation?
Because that part is very important. Realizing and understanding what you learn? What are you learning from what is currently happening?
So for me, it was like, what have I learned today? What am I learning right now? Where am I going? I’ve been a bit of a flop here. I went a bit backwards. And I didn’t do things properly.
But for next time, and that’s also the biggest thing, what you look forward to in the future, you understand that, I made a mistake here. It was a bit of a flop but what’s next for me? And how do I better improve this?
Next time, how am I going to do things differently? And you implement that, you take that as a lesson. Sometimes it’s not necessarily a failure. It’s a journey that you need to walk.
The best teacher is experience. So just experiencing that I’m telling you, the bigger deals will come, bigger things will happen because you experienced it the first time and now you know how to avoid those kinds of mistakes.
And especially when you’re young. That’s not going to happen. I didn’t know how to write a professional email in the beginning. I would just email someone and say, hey, and you can’t really do that from what I learned. Look at the failures as a great opportunity for learning.
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What advice would you give to others, especially young people like yourself, who want to start their own business?
The first thing is don’t be scared. Don’t be afraid. Just do it, like Nike says, just do it. Whether you’re scared, whether you’re not and you don’t lose anything by investing in yourself.
That’s also something that I learned because even if you start the business, it doesn’t go well, you will have come out with some lessons, you will have come out with some very beautiful things that you will have known and stuff like that.
Something I would also say to them is really focus as well because can I just say when you are young there’s a lot of distractions. There’s a lot of distractions and the things you’re trying to achieve are going to need a lot of focus.
You’re going to need to be present at the moment. You can’t be on the fence about it, you can’t be half here and half there. And you need to sit down and be like, this is what I want to do.
Something I say personally, find your grounding. I find my grounding through prayer. I love to pray about things. And I love to sit and just digest it and pray about it.
For someone else their grounding could be meditation, hiking, or whatever. Find your grounding. You don’t have to be busy with business. You can take out some time for yourself and find something that grounds you and that holds you dear and near to yourself.
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