The name Sylvia Banda is synonymous with the food and catering business in Zambia. She is the Managing Director for Sylva group of companies and has pioneered local entrepreneurship in this space .
Sylvia was born in a family of seven girls and one boy of which she is the third born. She is a mother of four Children and she recounts the time and moments she decided to enter into the business some 33 years ago to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, after leaving formal employment at ministry of education.
Speaking to ZBT in an exclusive interview that, Sylvia narrated that she decided to go into the world of business because she wanted to be a boss of her own and get the opportunity to do what she thought she did best.
Sylvia is a caterer (catering) by profession, who studied at Fairview College and previously known as Evelyn hone college hotel. She worked in government as a human resource manager at the ministry of education.
She told ZBT that she started her business soon after she got married in 1989 but before her business was on market, she had been doing some form of trading and from primary school when she was very young. She stated.
However, when she was at a primary school, she could make fritters from home and sell them in school premises, whenever she could sell them she would be very happy and later on would not know how to use the money. She would give the money to her mother to get her more raw materials or ingredients.
When Sylvia went to secondary school, she would not continue selling fritters. Instead she looked for the challenges that the pupils where facing that would help her make more money. She discovered that the pupils would always want to wear new clothes during the ballroom dancing club. And every month, they always used to have one ballroom dance in the school.
Therefore, she asked herself how she would make a lot of money. When her parents sent money, she decided to go buy sewing materials. She told herself to start designing exclusively such that, when she designs that outfit for one person, she cannot make it for another one, so news went out that she was able to make special outfits for dancing.
She started getting many orders such that she did not know what to do, as she was actually sewing using her hands. She made a lot of money such that her parents would not send her pocket money.
Sylvia continued with the business until at college. When she was at college, she could cook relish and sell it to students during lunch as they go to the dinning. She could again make a ‘lot of money’.
After college at Fairview, she worked as a civil servant for some time. She was a human resource manager which was a good position but had to quit because she wanted to do something that she knew she would always do best. Thereafter, she decided to go into the world of business. She first went to village industry looking for employment.
Sylvia explained to the board members what type of business she used to do at college and secondary school. The board members were impressed and she got the job to start up a business of her own, but in village industry and by then, they had just finished constructing the incubator.
Village industry is where Sylva catering solutions was born. Not only that, she also started a training institution as well, where students where being trained in different categories, at certificate and diploma level in catering. The college has been running for the past 20 years.
Sylvia realized that catering in most institutions can only run up to a diploma level, which led her to come up with Sylva university so that she could run the catering training up to a degree level. She started constructing the university across the University of Zambia.
In 2005, Sylvia food solutions was formed due to the drought that was experienced, she then started to train women on how to dry vegetables because of the droughts that took place in 2000-2001. They actually started exporting dry vegetables into America and other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, Sylva catering solutions started in 1989 where she just got the food from home, took it to a shop and started cooking. Initially Sylvia did not start her business with capital but with labour. She did not have money to buy the tables and the chairs. When the people smelt the aroma they started going to the shop.
Sylvia begun saving food to people, she had saved about 16-20 people and they were just standing because they thought she would direct them as to where to go and eat from.
Because she was so creative, she thought of something to say, so that they can start eating. Sylvia told them to say what is happening here is what we call in catering standing buffet, , so you can start eating in your standing positions while chatting with your neighbor.
However, that day she made a lot of money amounting at the time to K200 which is now about K2,000, almost the same amount that she was getting paid at work. This ignited a thought, “if I can make that amount in a day, how much can she make in a year”. She had used that money to go and buy ingredients for the next day and she kept on regenerating it.
That is how Sylva Food Solutions started and was registered in 1990. In 2010, Sylvia started working with farmers training them to plant vegetables and later on buy from them. The farmers started producing huge quantity of foods and Sylvia introduced Packaging because she thought it would help most of the smallholder farmers.
She actually started training 10 farmers and now has trained over 23,000 smallholder farmers and they are supporting her factory. World Bank saw how she was coming up, they came in, saw the factory and they later injected some funds which enabled Sylvia to set up a processing factory. She was now able to get more products from the local farmers process them, package them and sell.
The World Bank has injected some money again to set up a bigger processing plant. The equipment has already reached and the only thing remaining is setting it up. This factory is a contract packaging plant, which people can go and sign a contract and have their product packaged.
The factory which is soon to be installed cost US$1 million, and because of the current situation of Covid-19, setting up of the equipment has delayed. The processing plant is projected to start operating by October this year 2020.
Currently, the Sylva catering solutions operation have scaled down due to the pandemic. But Sylvia has ventured into the packaging factory where they can package or re-package and sell the products. Sylva food solutions presence is in all the ten provinces of Zambia.
