02 Jul 2013

A graduate of the Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) training programme, Mairos Muzawazi lives his dream of making a living through artwork.

Speaking in an interview on June 28, the man who hails from Francistown, applauded LEA for making his dream of establishing Afri décor designs come true.

Muzawazi said the reason why most of the youth failed to make it in life was not because they were failures, but had some challenges. He said it was high time youth utilised LEA programmes to turn their talents into feasible businesses.

He said through LEA, he had not only turned his ideas and dream into tangible a business, but also instilled in him a sense of commitment in running a business. Muzawazi also applauded the Ministry of Youth Sport and Culture that funded his business. 

“The journey has not been easy from the start, for a business to come into fruition I had to tackle the challenges of getting funding from the Department of Youth and Culture,” he noted.

He said the paper work was a back breaking exercise, but because of the inspiration and training that he acquired from LEA, it helped him to visualise his business and finally it was on a blue print.

The artist advised those who have dreams of becoming successful entrepreneurs that it takes hard work, commitment and dedication to ensure a success of their businesses.

“Ari décor designs houses my expression of artistic work in detail. I started art work while I was still at primary school after being inspired by a friend from Zimbabwe who was a welder,” he added.

After learning from him, he decided to register his own company, which was producing only welding work, but as time went on, he gave it a variety and through its expansion, his skills of art were well utilised and proved fruitful.

The artist serves his clients in two ways; when a client wants some product, the client can come with a sketch and if the client does not have the sketch they can brain storm together to come up with the wanted product.

Despite a good response from the clients, the artist decries that the equipment used are expensive and this makes it hard for him to meet the demands of his clients.

Muzawazi has however applied for a loan with the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) to address the challenge and he intends opening branches and running his own office as currently he is housed in one of the LEA incubators.

“The products I design are categorized into three sectors; horn and bone carving, steelwork and leatherwork,” he said.

Muzawazi stated that he gets his game skins for making leather works from South Africa and he shares profits with the suppliers. His leather products include ladies handbags, belts, shoes, wallets, laptop bags, ladies purses and traditional dance attire.

He imports leather from South Africa because local game skins are expensive. He exports his products to Zimbabwe. Ends