A Map of What We're Building, and Why.

A visual map of Bantu Vegan: produce, products, and experiences —and how they feed each other.

I put this quick board together after someone asked me, “So what is Bantu Vegan?” and my answer made me realise I would get eaten alive on Shark Tank. I needed one clear sentence, and I didn’t have it yet. I’ve always been more visual, so I tried answering in image form instead.

Our work can look like three different activities happening at once. In Bagamoyo, fence poles are being moulded for the next farm section and we’re planning water for the long heat. In Dar, a pot sits on the stove and a shampoo bar in product development is curing nearby. My phone lights up with the same two questions I keep getting lately: can you teach us, and when can we come. But really, our work is a loop, a system we’re building so more people can step into it.

This loop matters because agriculture is everywhere in Tanzania, but the reward doesn’t always match the work. When value stops at raw harvest, the margins stay thin and the risk stays closest to the farmer, many of whom, are women and girls. We’re building a tighter ecosystem on purpose, one where ingredients have a home and a face, products have a reasonable source and clear end-of-life, customers and visitors have a place and each other to learn from. The goal is simple: keep more opportunity moving through the same soil that sustains the place, instead of watching raw things leave and finished things —of varying quality, return to us expensive.

People often meet us through one doorway. Sometimes we’re the soap people. Sometimes we’re the mushroom people. Sometimes we’re the farm stay idea. The work makes the most sense when you see the full loop.

Produce. Products. Experiences. Three circles feeding each other, pole pole.

From shamba to kitchen, a skim-off the top: pineapples and limes on a wheelbarrow.

Produce

Everything that begins in sun and soil.

It’s the pineapples stacked in a wheelbarrow. And the limes rolling into the corners like they’re trying to escape back into the soil. It’s also the oyster mushrooms that only (barely) behave once you respect their finicky requirements: airflow, timing, patience, and only changing one variable at a time.

It’s also the less-photogenic work that makes harvest possible. The fence lines, labour, and water planning, plus neighbourhood meetings with your local government. We’re revisiting traditionally Tanzanian logic around water, seasons, and what land can provide, and pairing it with newer perspective and systems so that farmers can survive a hotter, less predictable future. The goal is resilience: secure water, protect crops, and grow with intention instead of gambling on rain. When the farm can produce reliably, everything downstream gets stronger: makers can plan, customers can trust quality, and experiences can bring people into a living system that supports more jobs and skills.

This is part of the urgency. Climate is shifting. Costs are rising. The water and soil systems have to be built early so the farm can hold steady later.

Plant-powered Bantu Vegan soap bars, local ingredients turned into everyday ritual.

Products

Local harvests, turned into everyday essentials.

These are the things that live in most people’s bathrooms and kitchens. Things that get finished, replaced, and quietly become part of a routine because they work and they feel good to use.

This is where craft becomes a system. We’re moving from “we can make great batches” to “we can make the same great batch, but larger, and on purpose, every time”—with a workshop layout and standards that can eventually support certification and export. This shift matters to us because consistency is how trust gets built, and how a small-batch brand becomes something people can rely on.

It also strengthens the ecosystem. When production is consistent, the farm can plan what to grow, suppliers can deliver with confidence, and more livelihoods can sit around the same value chain—from growers and processors to packers, retailers, and hospitality partners.

While that foundation is being strengthened, the product portfolio moves in sequence, on purpose. Shampoo bars first. Then liquid shampoo. Then conditioners and deep conditioners. After that: moisturisers, serums, lip balm, and sunblock—each one added only when we can make it well, make it consistently, and make it here.

We'll keep checking ourselves in the places that tell us the truth: farmers markets, small retail corners close to our customers, and face-to-face conversations where someone smells a bar, asks what’s inside, and tells you plainly what they want more of.

This is also why us. We’re Tanzanians building from soil to shelf with our own hands in Tanzania, so more value stays here—ingredients, processing, packaging, and the skills that come with doing it properly.

Kitchen work, before it becomes a product, or an archive.

Experiences

Where the loop becomes something you can step into.

People don’t only want to buy a bar of soap. They want to understand what it’s made from, why it works, and how it fits into their life. Sometimes it’s the ingredients. Sometimes it’s how it looks on the sink. Sometimes it’s the personality of the brand and what it says about them. Same with food. People want to know where it comes from, how it’s grown, what it does for their body, whether it fits their macros. And beyond products, they often yearn for a day that slows them down and brings them closer to land, craft, and culture.

Our strategy is to use tourism the way Tanzania does best, as a bridge between place and people. This country already carries rare attention. People cross oceans for its coastline, its wildlife, its Swahili history, its warmth. We want to invite that same attention inland, to the working systems behind everyday life, and let visitors meet Tanzania through making, cooking, planting, harvesting, and resting. Along the way, we’re building an archive too, the kind you can taste, touch, and carry home.

So we’re building experiences that fit around the farm’s rhythm and strengthen what’s already here. They create work across guiding, cooking, cleaning, growing, teaching, and sourcing. They bring direct demand to local ingredients and local craft. They help products and knowledge travel by word of mouth, because people trust what they’ve seen with their own eyes.

A visit becomes more than a nice day out. It brings people closer to the land and the hands behind what they use, and it keeps more value moving through the same local chain that makes the experience possible. Over time, Tanzania becomes more visible in the details. So when someone smells a soap, tastes a jam, or remembers a slow afternoon under a tree, they can say, that felt Tanzanian.

Building in Public

Why am I building in public?

I’m returning to the systems I grew up around, but asking deeper questions about their origins now. Coming back to Tanzania after spinning the block some, I’m realising how much depth people often miss beyond the famous beaches and safaris. The everyday systems that feed people, scent a home, and build livelihoods, and the stories behind them.

Sharing the build as it happens is my way of staying accountable. I want to show the farm decisions, the processing choices, the recipe testing, the small failures, the corrections, and the people doing the quiet work, then see what happens when you let people in early and start finding where the common ground is.

As we build, you’ll be able to follow the loop from soil to shelf to stay, while I’m still figuring out how to answer that Shark Tank question.

But, haba na haba, hujaza kibaba.

A little at a time, fills the pot.

If you want to follow along or be part of what we’re building, subscribe for updates or get in touch.

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