At just 25 years old, Nsuku Mahlahle, is proving that determination, compassion, and vision can create meaningful change.

The young female entrepreneur from Acornhoek, Mpumalanga, is fulfilling a pressing need in her community -- offering childcare services to working families.

Growing up in Acornhoek, Mahlahle watched many parents, particularly single mothers, struggle to find safe and affordable childcare services while they worked or searched for employment.

She understood that the lack of reliable early childhood care does not only affect children's development but it also limits parents' opportunities to improve their livelihoods.

This realisation inspired Mahlahle to grab the bull by its horns and took a leap of faith to make a difference in her community. So, with her mother’s help, Mahlahle decided to turn her passion for working with children into a business.

In 2018, her mother, Katekani Ndlovu, registered Vukosi Daycare Centre in Cottondale, a village situated about seven kilometres from Acornhoek. The centre officially began operating in 2019, helping Mahlahle to realise her dream of owning a day care centre.

The mother-and-daughter duo owns the centre, but the daughter has a higher equity share in the business than her mom.

“I have always had an interest in starting and operating a daycare centre. When I was in high school, I took care of some kids in my neighbourhood after school hours when their parents were still at work,” says Mahlahle.

The centre opened a year after she had completed matric. It initially operated from one of her family home’s rooms. For the last six years, Mahlahle has been struggling to raise capital to finance the construction of a safer and suitable structure for children in her care.The centre opened a year after she had completed matric. It initially operated from one of her family home’s rooms. For the last six years, Mahlahle has been struggling to raise capital to finance the construction of a safer and suitable structure for children in her care.

Her perseverance finally paid off this year when she received a R5,000 loan from the Women Development Bank (WDB) Trust. The loan has enabled her to start building the foundation for the structure. She is currently applying for more funding to build walls, implying she is still a long way from completing the structure.

Mahlahle is among 900 female entrepreneurs that have received collateral-free micro loans from the WDB Trust Microfinance Programme. The programme offers business loans of between R1,000 and R8,000 to rural women in Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces. The WDB’s loan book has a repayment rate of 97% across its 900 debtors.

WDB Trust CEO Ria Phiyega is in awe of Mahlahle’s entrepreneurial spirit, which demonstrates that South African micro-entrepreneurs are capable of contributing meaningfully to the economy and job creation when given support.

"What Nsuku has achieved at such a young age and within a short period of time is simply remarkable. I commend her can-do attitude. This affirms our view that micro-entrepreneurs do not lack ambition; all they need is financial support, training, and mentorship,” says Phiyega.

The WDB Trust, founded in 1991 by former first lady Zanele Mbeki and businesswoman Reeva Forman, is a parent organisation of the broader WDB Group, which also includes an investment arm WDB Investment Holdings.

The WDB Trust is essentially a microfinance lender modelled on Bangladesh's Grameen Bank started by Professor Muhammad Yunus in 1976.

While many entrepreneurs may feel the loan is a drop in the ocean for the types of businesses they want to launch or grow, Mahlahle is grateful for the helping hand from WDB Trust. For her, the loan was a Godsend which has given her business wings to fly.

Young people urged to explore bottom-of-pyramid economy

She says young, unemployed South Africans must seriously consider starting businesses to support themselves and their families. While she has taken an investment bet on the daycare centre, she implores young people, especially young women, to learn more about the types of businesses that are commonly found in rural areas and townships.

For instance, she lives in Acornhoek, a thriving rural to semi-rural area not far away from towns like Bushbuckridge and Hoedspruit. Most entrepreneurs in these areas operate small businesses such as spaza shops, hardware stores, bottle stores, taverns, hair salons, barbershops, seamstresses, dressmakers, cellphone repair shops and airtime vendors, car repair workshops, panel beaters, tyre-fixing and spray-painting shops. Some entrepreneurs are owners of taxis or rental bakkies that transport people and goods while others are in small-scale poultry and crop farming.

Although these grassroots, bottom of the pyramid businesses don’t offer the financial trappings and perks that large corporates offer, they provide livelihoods to millions of people.

Mahlahle chose the early childhood development (ECD) sector because its numbers made business sense. It is one of the largest social service industries in SA made up thousands of creches, preschools, day care centres. These ECD service providers offer child care to nearly 1.7 million children and employ up to 250, 000 people including teachers, assistants, cooks, and administrators. According to Wage Indicator, ECD teachers earn between R6 506 to R30 772 per month.

The sector has over 31,000 registered service providers that charge monthly fees ranging between R600 and R4,500, depending on the location. Mahlahle’s day care centre employs five people and cares for 52 children.

In a world where young people are obsessed with city-based white-collar jobs in technology, finance, law, real estate, marketing, and media, the ECD sector is a quiet money spinner that shouldn’t be ignored.

The day-care market alone generates about R25–30 billion of ECD sector’s annual revenue. But if the after-care sector is added to the broader ECD industry, the revenue climbs to more than R35 billion annually, according to estimates.

The sector is highly fragmented, with the 31, 000 service providers fighting for every piece of ECD’s market pie. These service providers include informal township and rural creches, small owner-operated preschools, church and NGO centres, private nursery schools, and franchise groups such as Curro Castle and Kidz College.

More than 90% of creches and daycare centres charge fees directly to parents, making parent payments the primary funding source.

Over the next five years, Mahlahle intends to grow and diversify her daycare business. She plans to to start poultry farming, which she hopes will generate income to fund future daycare centre expansion.

“I have a dream of extending the daycare centre into an English-medium Primary School. I am currently researching requirements for setting up the primary school,” says Mahlahle.

As demand for early childhood education continues to grow, Mahlahle stands a good chance of adding the private primary school into the daycare centre, enabling her to expand her services to more families. Her entrepreneurial journey and ambitions demonstrate that young people are capable of providing valuable services to their communities.

This means that they are also capable of rolling back high unemployment currently afflicting SA. The job market has struggled to suck in young job seekers due to big corporates not hiring in big numbers.

Large companies are battling to grow their workforces due to weak economic growth, rigid labour laws, severe skills mismatches, and the high cost of absorbing inexperienced entry-level workers.

Unfortunately, this toxic combination of economic drawbacks has left more than 12 million people out of the job market. The depressing part of this sad situation is that the brunt of this economic calamity is felt by young people. Roughly 60% of job-seekers are aged 15-24 years and 40% are aged 25-34 years.

Fortunately, Mahlahle has escaped unemployment, thanks to her determination to shape a brighter future for herself -- one child, and one family at a time.

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