The African Grower rollout

Our venturing into the sustainable-agriculture domain was initiated by a young man who gave up the safe corporate life to become a green entrepreneur — Louis-Gillis Janse van Rensburg. He started in aquaponics, moved into conventional hydroponics, and eventually developed an Africanised hybrid hydroponics system called the African Grower. This technology has formed the backbone of our recent socio-economic development projects in townships and rural villages across South Africa.

The African Grower was first deployed in the townships of the Cape Flats — the first initiative at the Sakhulwazi Women’s Co-op community centre in Philippi, with a similar installation in Khayelitsha.

We have trained the South African National Defence Force Reserve Force members in home-gardening (Bloemfontein and Barberton); enabled Gold Youth “graduates” near Hazyview; and, during a COVID-challenged 2020, built a research facility in Polokwane with Prof. Roumiana Nikolova of the University of Limpopo and a facility with 3L in Kimberley for Community Works Programme members.

We partnered with the Mr Price Foundation in Durban to refine both the technology and the deployment model. The ease of use of the vertical-growing technology even inspired a Mr Price team to venture into the mountains of Lesotho to enable the highest home-growers in Africa. Facilities followed for PwC in Midrand and — the largest collection of African Grower tunnels to date — for the Ndlovu Care Group near Groblersdal, alongside a progressive team in Sharpeville at the former 1960s police station, busy beating swords into plowshares.

Note: the old site carried duplicate “Agriculture” and “Conservation Agriculture” pages with identical content; they are merged here. The full photo set from each installation will be added with the media assets.