From internal audit to aspiring commercial farmer

The 2025 women’s month theme of “ Building Resilient Economies for All” translate to empowering and supporting all persons particularly, women in the small and medium business to form part of the inclusive economy in the value chain.

The Department of Rural Development and Agriculture launched the “Basadi Temong” a Sepedi word that means women in agriculture held at Nakedi Poultry farm, Ga-Mabuela in the Mogalakwena local Municipality.

Nakedi Poultry farm was an intentional location for the launch on 19 August as the farm is owned by a 32 year old Itumeleng Mahwete.

Itumeleng is an internal Audit graduate from the Vaal University of Technology. With the high rate of unemployment amongst graduate, she decided to get involved in farming in 2019.

“It was during my grandmother’s funeral that I started to dream about farming because, for the duration of funeral preparation to lay my granny to rest which took a week, only chickens were consumed and I started to see a business opportunity in closing the gap in the market.”

After the burial, Itumeleng took a decision to relocate from Gauteng to Limpopo province to attend poultry courses and get a mentor before she was allocated a piece of land to work on.

In 2021 after training and having a mentor, Nakedi Poultry farm started with their production specializing in hatchery, supplying eggs to informal market around Mogalakwena area. After being assisted by the department of Rural Development and Agriculture with their extension programmes and officers, the farm further got funding from the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) to expand her business.

The funding was used to construct a chicken house that can carry a capacity of 5 000 chickens which benefited the business to expand.

Itumeleng is now leasing another land to grow the business into commercial farming. She has now partnered with other stakeholders to supply them with 20 000 eggs on a weekly basis.

She has pleaded with the provincial government to ensure that the building of resilient economies for all is realized by young entrepreneurs not only launching the Basadi Temong without ensuring that water challenges are attended to, which will allow the operations to flourish and will part take in employing the locals as business people.

Currently Nakedi Poultry farm has five permanent employees and 10 on temporary contracts on the two sides managed by Itumeleng.

Committing to the departmental values, MEC for Rural Development and Land Reform Nakedi Kekana encouraged individuals who are in agricultural business to reach out to her department for assistance in order to sustain their business and contribute to the food chain in the country. EC