By Matṧeliso Phulane
Locally made Senqu Charcoal – a briquette brand produced by a company with the same name – is now improved and proving its resilience.
The major ingredient of the charcoal is the bitter bush shrub (92 percent). It also contains saw dust, starch and clay to make burning more quickly.
Senqu Charcoa was established by lawyer-cum-entrepreneur Toka Letsie in 2019, at a time when he had hit rock-bottom and was going through depression.
At the time when government had declared war on the invasive shrub through its youth apprenticeship programme commonly known as ‘lihalahala’ project, Letsie figured out how to put bitter bush to good use.
“The question that lingered in my head was, if this is shrub so massive a problem that government is determined to wipe it out, isn’t there a way to get something positive out of it?
“I was curious to find a way to utilise it productively, and discovered that it was being made good use of in some countries. I came across information that countries like Namibia are turning the problem into a much more sustainable solution that creates jobs for quite a number of people.
“That’s when I realised that the character of our problem is far different from Namibia in that Namibia the problem was actually certain species of trees, whereas but our problems was just a shrub,” he said.
That was when it occurred to him that using bitter bush to make charcoal addressed a number of Sustainable Development Goals mostly – poverty eradication, innovation, and climate action – because the shrub is carbon-neutral in that if uprooted something else grows, such as grass.
Letsie also realised that turning bitter bush into charcoal means re-cleaning both agricultural land and graze land for animals.
“It was exciting that the initiative will be solving many problems at once. However, the difficult part was, how I do this when I had zero funds. I had to take odd jobs from time to time.
“I would use the money I made for the basic needs of the family while at the same time investing on this project, undertaking stuff like travelling, research, experiments and buying equipment from scrapyard,” he recalled.
In 2020 Letsie had his very first final product which was not of the ideal standard due to incongruent measurements of the ingredients.
“It had quite a number of challenges such as the charcoal not lasting long enough. The shape itself was problematic when it came to compressing the charcoal. In spite of such challenges, I received positive reviews from people who braai.
“Apart from, everything came to a grinding halt at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 as I didn’t have any source of income anymore,” he noted.
Letsie said he resuscitated the project in August last year. Luckily clients had missed him and he started putting resources together and focus on his brainchild which had already taken shape. This time the end product turned out to be a massive improvement on the prototype, and a huge hit with customers.
“Sehalahala is available in abundance at Ha Mabote and it is a big advantage that I don’t have to travel to the mountains to harvest it.
“The product will hit the shelves soon and we will be available at the Basotho Flea Market by BEDCO this coming Saturday,” he said.
Letsie can be contacted on +266 62123225. He is also available on social media platforms such as X for more details.
