From student side hustle to rural job creator

What started as a student business idea in 2019 has grown into an emerging agricultural enterprise that is creating jobs, producing food and supporting rural development in QwaQwa, in the Free State.

MS Construction and Projects was founded on 12 August 2019 by Matsae Tsotetsi and Molingoane Morwa Phillimon while they were both studying at North-West University’s Vaal Triangle Campus.

Tsotetsi was in her final year of Financial Accounting, while Phillimon was in his second year of Public Management and Governance.

“The company was called MSC Agri Construction and Projects because we wanted to do construction in agriculture,” said Phillimon.

However, the founders soon realised that agriculture could respond more directly to the challenges facing their home area.

“We realised that with the high rate of unemployment back home in QwaQwa, which is a rural area, most graduates tend to move to the city in search of greener pastures,” he said.

Their entrepreneurial journey began not on a farm, but with a small tuck shop selling kotas to students.

“We made a lot of money from that,” said Phillimon.

That success gave them the confidence to pursue farming, drawing on Phillimon’s family background in agriculture.

They moved to QwaQwa, growing vegetables in a backyard plot before progressing to a one-hectare plot owned by Phillimon’s grandfather, where his grandparents farmed for subsistence.

“From that one hectare, we managed to secure funding from the SAB Foundation. We became part of the SAB Tholoana Programme and the Maluti Incubation Centre,” said Phillimon.

The company has since gained recognition as a graduate incubatee of the Maluti TVET College Centre for Entrepreneurship.

The business has also expanded into poultry and piggery farming.

“We are starting to build our own chicken houses that will accommodate 5 000 laying hens per cycle,” said Phillimon.

The business now farms on six hectares of tribal land alongside its original one-hectare plot. Maluti-a-Phofung Municipality supplied machinery, including an excavator, to prepare the land.

The Free State Department of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environmental Affairs also provided water reticulation, three boreholes, fencing, two guard houses and a storage facility.

Since 2022, the operation has created more than 640 part-time jobs through a partnership with the Social Employment Fund and the African Conservation Trust. The opportunities run for about 10 months each year.

Today, MS Construction and Projects sells produce to cash-and-carry stores, schools, police stations, clinics and directly to consumers.