Lesotho:Nthatisi Motsamai

Nthatisi Motsamai is a young entrepreneur who is owning hair and beauty salon and at the same time she is selling Inuka products. She wanted to be involved in the sports field as part of work at the beginning but she was not motivated. She was also talented on hairdressing as she started trying her hand at braiding at the young age. Motsamai had an opportunity to meet gender links where she was attending training workshops on entrepreneurship.

She then started to notice her opportunity to start the business. At first she would do house calls to do people’s hair and she never considered making that a proper business and she never thought this would be her source of income. Gender Links has unleashed the knowledge and skills and transforming them into a long-term financial independence. She started the salon at her home until she moved to hire premises. Motsamai recalled how she faced with depending on her family for her needs has shown how she is able to make a living out of her skills that she never thought she could make a business out of.

She indicated that as she continued to attend the trainings, she began to have business goals, the methods on how to attain those goals as well as setting the time frame to achieve them. As a results of that her business is growing and there are viable services she is using as to proof a success in the market, one of them is that she is mostly dealing with natural hairs. The business is able to create jobs only during rush times, that is when she will hire a person to help her. She added that she went to school to improve her knowledge and skills on beauty and hairdressing at tertiary level.

She further stated that she got a new place for her business, though it is still under renovation but soon she will be moving from rural to town where she is hoping to see more customers. This will help her to register her business and have a business bank account. She was able to save money from her business and pay herself but lockdown was an obstacle because she did not achieve some of things she planned such as advanced salon equipment that she will use to the new place.

She concluded that even though she does not have computer, she is active on social media and realized that it helps her to get more new clients because she markets her business on Facebook using her smart phone.