After a trip to Israel in 2017 exposed Mwamy Mlangwa to hydroponics technology, she returned home to set up Dar es Salaam’s first hydroponics farm. Since then she has become Tanzania’s poster-woman for innovative and technology-driven agriculture in the country. Mlangwa shares her view about the future of hydroponics farming in Africa, and the solutions it can hearld for the continent with AMAKA.

Before hydroponic farming, Mwamy Mlangwa spent 20 years in the corporate world, where her impact includes serving as director of the M-Pesa Women Empowerment Initiative (MWEI), which provided loans to low-income female entrepreneurs. When she decided to pivot, she knew she wanted something that would challenge her and the answer was hydroponics farming. Hydroponics substitutes water for soil and solves the problem of land scarcity and affordability. Using only a quarter-acre of land, Mlangwa’s company, Mwamy Green Veggies, grows vegetables for the supermarkets and hospitality industry in Tanzania. With precise water and nutrient inputs, Mlangwa is able to grow lettuce seedlings, for example, to maturity in just 15 days. 

First things first, why hydroponic farming? And what are the limits to what can be farmed with hydroponic technology? 

I wanted to do something different so I could inspire young people to see farming can be fun, time efficient, and technology driven. Also, hydroponic farming helped me utilise the small space I have to help me achieve big harvest results. I focus on five types of vegetables and you can grow a lot of fruits, vegetables and grains but not root crops with hydroponic farming.

Hydroponic farming has a reputation for nutrient sterility, total dependency on electricity and a demand for constant monitoring and maintenance. Are these challenges true for you and how do you field them?

These challenges are true for me. But in terms of electricity, I have the backup batteries and a standby generator, which helps when the power goes off because we are in Africa. To get someone to monitor the system for 24-hours was initially very hard and I was on my own in 2017 and 2018. In that period, I had to train about six people until I got the right person and we worked well together in 2019 until COVID hit. I just had to work out solutions because I knew about these challenges but I wanted to do it anyway.

Beside the change in staff, how else did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your business? 

I had to shut down my business because of the pandemic but I started planting seeds again in December 2020 when we heard of vaccine developments. I started to take my products to the market in March 2021 but it’s still slow because my main market is the hospitality industry: hotels, airlines, safaris and restaurants. But now I have to rely on supermarkets and small restaurants. The big hotels, safari camps and restaurants are yet to come back and the airlines have changed their menu completely. They no longer use fresh foods as much, mostly packaged foods now. In the coming years, I see myself diversifying beyond hydroponics using the knowledge of seeds and nutrients that I have built over these years. 

If you don’t like where you are, move!

How did you get to the point where you decided you wanted to start your own agriculture company and you wanted it to be based on hydroponics? 

My story is funny to me. I’m a wife and a mother of two teenagers, and I worked with Vodafone for 17 years and with the commercial bank, NMB, for one year and a half. My corporate life was very miserable, waking up at 4:30am, spending the day at the office. One day I said, ‘It is enough, I have to do something else with my life.’

I thought I was going to be a housewife because I like cooking! Either that or I would open my own boutique or salon. But then my husband told me, ‘Mwamy, this is not for you. You won't do it.’ He encouraged me to explore the world outside Tanzania, so that hopefully I could get more ideas. And so I went to Israel, where he is from, my in-laws live there and my daughter moved there recently. It was while out there that I saw people doing hydroponic farming in their backyards and I thought I could definitely do this!

How has the process of securing finance for your venture been?

When I started it, it was so hard. Banks did not believe in my proposal so I had to start with my own capital, my pension savings. They told me nothing like this can work in Tanzania but now a lot of banks are coming to me to offer me loans. 

"If we don’t take climate change seriously, we will lose our world if we continue on the current path we are on"

No, there is another lady, Jane, who happens to be my friend and I taught her about hydroponics farming. She runs Shamba Fresh. There is also a group of recent agriculture graduates who I also mentor. The field is gradually growing in Tanzania.

You have mentioned in a different interview that the industrialisation agenda by the late President, John Magufuli, was critical to Mwamy Green Veggies’s existence. Can you tell us more about how the government and its economic infrastructure is supporting the hydroponics sector and the wider agricultural industry in Tanzania?

The government is supporting hydroponics significantly. When I started my hydroponics farm, the government recognised the opportunity it holds and subsidised the cost of pipes from the factories producing them here in Tanzania. They have also removed the tax on building greenhouses and on some of the nutrients we need for hydroponics farming in an effort to push hydroponics as an alternative way to do agriculture, especially to young people. They recognise that the population is getting bigger and not everybody is able to afford 10 acres of farmland.

As a hydroponics expert, what future does hydroponic farming have in Africa? How sustainable is it and what are the obstacles to that future? 

In Africa, we are still lagging behind. People are still thinking of agriculture as having to be out in big spaces. But with the openness of the world, I see changes in the next two, three years. We have to remember that our leaders are old and still have the mentality that farming has to be on 2,000 acres of farmland. Something we can do to draw more attention to the benefits of hydroponics is to emphasise the environmental cost of popular large-scale farming methods. They usually have a high carbon footprint from their gas emissions and often have to cut down trees. If we don’t take climate change seriously, we will lose our world if we continue on the current path we are on. We need to encourage people to focus on small farms and we have to influence our leaders. 

As an African woman entrepreneur, who are the top three people that inspire you? 

Our president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, who came to power at a very critical time. We did not expect to lose our former president, but she has taken up the mantle very well. She has really inspired all of us women and girls in Tanzania to think that we can do anything we set our minds on, and to see the political arena as part of our world. My parents are no longer with me, but they really inspired me when I was young. They always told me I could do anything I dreamed of. 

*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.