BY PHESHEYA KUNENE – EDITOR
LUDZELUDZE – At first light Vuyisile Siphesihle Dlamini walks the red earth of Ludzeludze as if she is checking on a household member.
The young farmer moves with the stealthy authority of someone who has rebuilt more than a farm; she has rebuilt her life. She is one of 121 youth beneficiaries of the Eswatini National Youth Council agribusiness initiative and the recipient of E131 250 that she plans to invest in Sheroes Village Chickens, her organic village poultry enterprise.
Vuyisile grew up in Hhohho without household farming traditions and without agriculture classes at her high school. Self reliance pushed her into business. While funding her university studies she launched a small cosmetics line and used those profits to plant green pepper seedlings. Those modest beds supplied Manzini markets and paid tuition, rent and food. Her early success taught her a simple lesson. Farming could be an engine, if she learned to protect it from climate and uncertainty.
A hailstorm and an unforgiving summer taught her the second lesson. After a season of losses she paused to reassess land tenure and climate risk. She redirected her energies into poultry. Sheroes Village Chickens began as a modest collection of chicks and a determination to raise indigenous birds naturally. The flock today includes chicks, growing imiphaphane and mature hens. A new chicken house is under construction and practical purchases such as chick cages and feeders have already reduced mortality and improved productivity.
The ENYC grant is the pivot from fragile survival to deliberate scale. Vuyisile said she applied to expand production and strengthen market reliability. She told Agribusiness Media she planned to use the E131 250 to buy forty mature hens, twenty growing birds and five cocks, and to purchase feeders, drinkers, commercial feed and essential production inputs. Part of the funding will complete the coop and install secure housing that protects stock from heat, rain and predators. She said the grant has already allowed her to negotiate bulk supply agreements with local resellers and to plan for consistent weekly deliveries to market.
Her approach mixes practical thrift with modern thinking. She sources materials and services from other youth entrepreneurs, buying a chick cage from a local maker and roofing from a young supplier. She applies principles learned at a financial literacy and digital marketing workshop in Lusaka, where she studied budgeting, cash management and cautious use of loans.
She said she prefers to build incrementally, reinvesting profit rather than leaning on debt. She also draws on agroecology techniques acquired from the Swaziland Rural Women’s Assembly, using organic seed preservation and low input methods that protect the soil and reduce costs.
Achievements are already tangible. She reestablished herself as a known supplier in Manzini and surrounding markets, she has a branded uniform and logo, and she has begun building an enterprise that can employ local youth. The project has raised her production reliability and customer trust. She told Agribusiness Media that the grant will allow her to increase stock numbers, stabilise supply and create the first paid positions at Sheroes Village Chickens.
Her story is not without friction. Land insecurity remains the single largest barrier to expansion. She described how lack of secure land forced her to halt green pepper production for a season while she sought a plot she could properly invest in. Climate extremes have repeatedly undone her plans. She recalled replanting after hail and watching seedlings succumb to heat. Capital constraints complicate everything; small losses can cascade into missed seasons. Her response has been to plan conservatively, prioritise climate resilient infrastructure and pool community skills to lower costs.
Vuyisile’s public engagements have sharpened her voice. She attended a Senate session to debate the 2025 loan bill and to speak for youth entrepreneurship. She said she was moved when Princess Lindiwe Dlamini praised her presentation and told her that her courage foreshadowed greatness. She said those words have bolstered her confidence and shaped a leadership style that is steady rather than performative.
Her message to peers is plain and urgent. She told Agribusiness Media that young people should stop waiting for a perfect opportunity and begin with the resources at hand. She urged them to start small, learn financial discipline, avoid unnecessary debt and to view failure as a lesson rather than a verdict. She framed agriculture as a platform for job creation, not simply a means to survive, and she invited other young entrepreneurs to specialise in complementary services from cold storage to mechanised tools.
There is an unmistakable ambition in her plans. She envisions Sheroes Green Vegetable Farm resuming one day with greenhouses and irrigation, supplying green pepper regionally and expanding the poultry enterprise so it can employ women and youth from her community. She sees a value chain where farmers, toolmakers and logistics providers all prosper together.
In her final words to Agribusiness Media she framed her journey as collective. She said the grant did not rescue her alone but validated a broader vision for youth led agribusiness. She said she intends to repay that confidence by creating work, supplying wholesome produce and mentoring the next generation of agripreneurs.
Vuyisile Dlamini’s farm is small in acreage but expansive in intent. It is a laboratory of resilience that measures success not only in birds or yields but in the jobs created and the confidence returned to a community. As the poultry house nears completion and the next clutch settles under the heat lamp, she is quietly assembling the instruments of a rural revival. Her is a portrait of ambition arranged in humble materials and careful budgets, an argument for youth investment that is born in necessity and sharpened into a plan for prosperity.
Sheroes Village Chickens is not only Vuyisile Dlamini’s business. It is a promise to a generation that the future of Eswatini agriculture belongs to those who dare to begin.
