24 Jul 2014

A 28-year-old woman of Gumare, Ms Ketshephemang Matenanga, is living her life to the fullest with the success of her restaurant funded by Youth Development Fund (YDF).

In an interview with BOPA, Ms Matenanga said her passion for cooking led her parents to enrol her at Career Dreams Centre in Maun to undertake a food production course in 2010.

The wisdom of listening to Radio Botswana and reading the DailyNews paper gave her knowledge of the YDF initiative.

She said she did not waste any time and went on to process all the proposal requirements such as trading licence, company registration, lease agreement and a business plan for Tastylicious, the name of the company.

Ms Matenanga travelled as far as Maun and Francistown to collect some quotations, which were also a necessity in the proposal.

In August 2011, she submitted her proposal with all the necessary requirements and after that, her first landlord turned down their lease agreement and disappeared with her P4 500 rental amount.

“This delayed my approval as I had to hunt for another plot in this land scarce village,” she lamented. Fortunately, she found another complex next to Gumare Primary Hospital and her project was finally approved.

She has employed three local youths and her sister who also underwent a food production course.

Ms Matenanga said they were working hard as a team with one objective of service delivery and customer satisfaction. She commended her staff for hard work and dedication.

She said her sister, Ms Keoineetse Matenanga, looked after the business when she is not around and was helpful in consoling her during hard times.

They serve different dishes from local to international to meet the preferences of different customers’ preferences. The delicious scent of food in the air around Gumare Primary Hospital would definitely catch the passer-by’s senses and drag them to the complex, where they will met by happy faces. She caters for weddings, parties and ceremonies with up to five hundred people and the company also bids for government tenders.

Her vision is to have her own complex and opening branches in the region, adding that the secret behind her prosperity is patience, self-confidence and hard work.

She said her low academic qualification did not depress her but rather triggered her to stand up and uplift her family’s economic status. “I encourage the youth to enrol for different government programmes, not only to change their lives for the better but also to develop their country,” she said. ENDS