By Neo Kolane
An entrepreneur from Mafeteng, ‘Matsomoli Mokhele has decided to produce own tea after realising that Basotho have practised making and enjoying the beverage.
Her blend of tea is known as Mafube olive tea.
Her invention was inspired by the sunrays. The rays usually show up early when the sun starts to shine before anybody goes about with own business of the day.
Mafube olive tea started being produced in March 2020 while sales started in June 2020.
Mafube olive tea is a mixture of wild mint and wild olive trees found in Lesotho.
Mokhele who is also a qualified nutritionist added that she was overwhelmed by rising cases of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases in the country.
“People have been experiencing colds and coughs during cold seasons. So I thought of making something to relieve the situation. I conducted a research to find out how in the past days were able to manage some diseases. I found out that they were able to produce medicines by using indigenous plants found in the area,” she told the paper.
She said that her business is incubated at the National University of Lesotho (NUL) Innovation Hub.
Mokhele narrated that she was involved in a weaning product as her final year project. After graduation she was called by her final year project supervisor to come to NUL Innovation Hub to do mass production of such products.
She added that the project needed a lot of expensive machinery to kick start. While she awaited for the arrival of the equipment she thought of what she could do in the meantime.
She said that tea became best option after several ideas evaluations. She realised that such production only required cheaper resources.
“During the evaluation of tea idea, she scored highest points amongst other ideas I had and it needed cheaper resources. Also as a nutritionist I was overwhelmed by rising cases of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases in the country among the people
“The support is great although the tea is still available in few shops and were are working so hard in order to see the produce shelved in more shops locally,” she hoped.
“The tea besides having a lot of nutrients due to combination of those plants, it has high content of antioxidant called oleuropein that is five times more powerful than vitamins
It is also a 100 percent organic tea.
The hardworking individual said that there is competition directly and indirectly.
“I will overcome the competition by making sure we have our product in shops across the country and marketing our product across all media platforms. I will educate our customers how our product is different from the ones available on the market and why they should buy it,” Mokhele said.
