Sylvia Banda's entrepreneurial qualities surfaced in high school

Sylvia Banda has been working to combat the low demand for locally produced, traditional food in Zambia by creating entrepreneurial hubs that guarantee markets for these goods and by fostering an appreciation for local food in both rural and urban areas. 

In this way, she has  tackling the high levels of poverty in rural Zambia and facilitating the economic and social development of smallholder farmers by encouraging a shift from subsistence farming to commercial farming of local food. 

Sylvia founded SFS in 2005 to provide an efficient and viable avenue for enhancing economic empowerment of rural smallholder farmers. Because of the legal structure in Zambia, Sylvia had to set up her organization as a for-profit in order to be allowed to conduct business with local farmers and connect them to markets in the Zambian context. 

Sylvia’s entrepreneurial qualities surfaced in high school when she could identify business opportunities to design and sell clothes to her classmates or prepare recipes and offer them to the school kitchen. 

Born in a family of seven girls and one boy, she set her mind at a very early age that she wanted to be her own boss. With her passion for food, she studied catering and then got a job at a Lusaka-based Catering Institute. 

When later she was deployed to a Human Resources department instead of the kitchen, she felt misplaced and this pushed her to start her own catering business albeit with no start-up capital. Out of the 30 students in her catering class, Sylvia was the only one who had made ap business career out of it, a testament to her passion for the food industry. 

Her small catering/restaurant business was set up in 2002 as a one-woman show, with Sylvia as the only employee. With no capital, she had to borrow raw materials (cooking oil, vegetables, etc.) from her kitchen at home. She did not even have furniture on her first day such that her first customers ate while standing. This did not dampen her enthusiasm - her creativity made her think fast and she proudly announced to her customers “This is a standing buffet, feel free to mingle and network as you eat!” her business rapidly grew and after three years was running 16 canteens for corporate clients but wanted to fulfill her passion for transforming food to reach its full social and economic potential. 

So she handed over the management of the catering business to her husband and founded Sylva Food Solutions (SFS), a social mission driven innovation business hub, in order to promote local Zambian food. Her interest was ignited by her frustration at seeing how imported food was being promoted and consumed by most people especially in the urban areas. 

To Sylvia, this was unfair, as most of the imported food has less nutritional value and diversity in taste as compared to local food that is also cheaper. This, coupled with the plight of poverty of the rural smallholder farmers, moved her to focus 100 percent of her time and energy to empower local farmers economically and promote local Zambian food. 

Her passion to promote local food and contribute to the rural economic development agenda of Zambia has also pushed her to be a role model in Zambian business circles, locally and in the international CO and donor sectors. Driven by the philosophy ‘Finish what you start,’ Sylvia sees SFS in the next 5 years as a center of excellence for promoting and marketing indigenous Zambian food to benefit rural smallholder farmers and also as a reference point for other African countries.