SMEDI doing its best to assist Malawian SMEs

Malawi: Mr Dennis Chitowe, Managing Director of Mzuzu Dairy, is grateful to SMEDI for connecting them to MBM bank to obtain loans and machinery for processing their products, as well as being trained in various aspects and being able to showcase their products at a SADC event at BICC in Lilongwe so that people can learn about what they do.

Chitowe began his journey after discovering a passion for daily life as well as the fact that many farmers in the northern region had no market for their milk products.

As a young entrepreneur, Chitowe thought it would be prudent to assist northerners by opening the Mzuzu Dairy so that reliance on the southern and central regions for milk processors would be obsolete.

"After considering these issues, I returned to school to study animal science in order to fuel my passion for the northern region and to gain more basic knowledge in processing daily products," he said.

"I received the equipment in Malawi in November 2019 and completed my first product test line," he added.

In February 2020, the Malawi Bureau of Standards certified Mzuzu Daily, and in March, Mzuzu Daily began production, supplying their products throughout the country.

The main challenges Mzuzu Dairy faces are identifying a team that believes in its vision and dreams, and most importantly, having a team to trust when they are not present, he says.

The other challenge is financial, as it is an SME with no attractive salaries.

Chitowe encourages fellow entrepreneurs not to give up on their dreams, stating that entrepreneurship has never been easy and will never be easy, but it does require one to be passionate about that particular thing.