Beatrice Kajiru Matau is a Tanzania business woman who is making headway in the transport and logistics sector in east and southern Africa. Brought up by a determined and entrepreneurial single parent who owned a retail shop and bred poultry, inspired her from an early age. At home when Beatrice, the youngest of five children, was ten years-old her mother began asking her to balance the business books and consequently a healthy appetite for number crunching and business was born. Not surprisingly Beatrice left university with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Mzumbe University, Morogoro, Tanzania, and began her career at NMB bank. Her role was advising clients on start-ups and growing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in the heart of the business quarter, Kariakoo, in Tanzania’s business city, Dar es Salaam, also her home town.
A few years into her career Beatrice did an evening course and earned an MBA in Finance and Banking, from Mzumbe University Dar es Salaam Campus. Advising clients at the bank on what she ultimately wanted to do herself lead to her setting up JB Holdings Company Ltd in 2008, with the sole intent of providing transportation service for goods and agricultural products within Tanzania and East African countries. But it wasn’t until 2011 that she began working on her enterprise full time.
At the bank Beatrice found herself working as a small loans officer, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) loan officer, and later as a commercial manager, and it was here that her ideas for her own business were fostered. Kariakoo is a bustling commercial centre at the heart of SME growth in Tanzania, and as part of her job, Beatrice was processing loans to clients, most of them were SMEs, and visiting their businesses and homes, which they had mortgaged to the bank as collateral. Once Beatrice approved their loans she witnessed small businesses flourish to their full potential with her help, especially SME clients, who she guided to keep business records, calculate the costs and understand the profit of their business. “I really wanted to do my own business but the challenge was that my time was taken up with full time employment at the bank,” she said.
Beatrice soon realised there was a business opportunity for her to supply products to the homes of her SME clients such as; sand, aggregates, stones and other building, as clients were busy with their businesses, with no time to supervise the kind of sourcing and transportation needed. Beatrice wanted to fill this gap with a transport business, and she applied for a loan from NMB bank to finance one dumper truck, with a view to buying more trucks at a later stage. In fact it was not an easy move, as she was at a cross roads finding the strength to venture out on her own but also working full time at the bank. Her husband, family and friends encouraged her to make the move and she’s never looked back. She quit the bank in 2011. Cash was tight, and starting the business would have been impossible without her personal savings and a loan from her employer against her salary and support from her family.
 âA common mistake we often make as entrepreneurs is to overlook and take for granted those sources of capital that are around us and within our reach. Your friends, family, colleagues, neighbours and people within your social sphere can be interesting sources of capital, especially in the early stages of growing a business.â
Beatrice’s mission is to be a leader in the specialised transportation of goods within East and Southern Africa. The company has branched out to provide warehouse space and car hire services, with a variety of tipper and dumper trucks to cater for any order from 6 to 30 cubic meters. More recently JB Holdings has diversified its portfolio and transports agricultural products across the country including maize, rice, beans, sunflower, and potatoes. The company has even purchased 10 acres of a 40 acre farm and has begun pineapple growing. In the future the company wants to contribute to post-harvest loss management for smallholder women farmers in Tanzania.
“Most of our clients concerning agricultural products are women entrepreneurs, which account for about 80% of our business portfolio, while men account for at least 20%.”
The transport business is a male dominated field in Tanzania, Africa and the world at large. It was not easy for Beatrice to fit into the male dominated trucking business. “I actually have to work twice as hard. This is not only a male dominated field in terms of business owner, it is also quite technical, and demands creativity, hard work and professionalism.” With these attributes in mind, Beatrice has earned the respect of the business community she operates in. “I believe I am beginning to prove myself from the deals I have been able to make; the business is successful with steady growth and expansion happening.”
Loan financing interest rates and external factors such as unpredictable fuel prices are some of the challenges the company faces. When the fuel prices go up it eats into profits as the deal has been previously fixed and there is no room for client renegotiation. Human resource issues such as recklessness, lack of trust amongst drivers, leading to route diversion, unaccounted for mileage claims, vehicle damage and downtime, are also sources of serious concern.
To overcome these challenges the company has invested in technology, including the use of a CARTRACK system, which monitors the movement of vehicles and in turn clients feel more secure when dealing with the company. “In 2016, two of my trucks were stolen from the yard, but with the help of the CARTRACK and fleet management system we tracked and recovered them within 3 hours when they were already outside of the Dar city radius.” Beatrice also uses an accounting package to easily facilitate and control financial management.
In Tanzania, gender inequality remains a global development challenge, in fact gender inequality has been the greatest barrier to women who own and are developing business startups. Gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities are ingrained in the culture, starting from the family, community and even the country at policy level. However, this is slowly changing as the vice-president of the country is a woman, Samia Hassan Suluhu.
Gender barriers haven’t stopped Beatrice, she has this to say about women running successful businesses, “Don’t be afraid of hard work, be ready to seek advice from professionals, use the advice you are given, and be a good listener. Dare to make decisions and dare to dream, it’s the only way forward. Never abandon your vision.” Uplifting words from a woman who is living proof of the mantra she lives by.
Beatrice’s Business Tips
- Before you invest, ask yourself what is your motivation? For some it is money, for others it is passion. For a few it is both. The harsh reality, however, is that money will trickle in, but what happens when it stops flowing, do you quit? There are high failure rates among business start-ups because entrepreneurs do not undertake research before investing and therefore have no clear strategy. Before you take the leap, know what you are getting into.
- Draw upon expertise, in the course of researching professional advice I managed to meet a CARTRACK specialist who gave the best advice and a good package according to my requirements. From then on, the drivers, route, mileage and the fuel consumption, have not been a problem to my transport business, instead I have managed to get more business, more profit with less cost in comparison to other transporters, as I can manage to track the routes, mileage, fuel consumption and trucking system, when the truck route is diverted or a vehicle stolen.
- My business strategy is to earn more money than my business competitors, and my best strategy is the diversification of businesses to other, more less risk businesses with more lucrative opportunities so as to maximize profit and reduce the risk of putting all eggs in one basket. This strategy has helped me a lot in hedging the risk , especially when there are low seasons and or declines in some sector business growth. I find other diversified business opportunities with low risk and a low decline rate, positively sustain my cash flow and liquidity position.
Beatrice Kajiru Matau is one of the beneficiaries of the Women Creating Wealth a Pan African entrepreneurship development programme that has significantly grown the businesses and transformed the behaviours, skills, and confidence of women entrepreneurs. To date the Graça Machel Trust in partnership with Virgin Unite have graduated 300 high growth entrepreneurs in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. In 2019 â 2020, we have the pleasure of bringing the initiative to South Africa. If you are interested in participating in this initiative, follow this link.Â
The Trust supports and mobilises civil society networks on issues of ending child marriage, ending violence against children, ending female genital mutilation and promoting childrenâs rights, to carry out advocacy and action across Africa. Special focus is placed on Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia where child marriage continues to be a problem largely driven by poverty, gender inequality, harmful traditional practices, conflict, low levels of literacy, limited opportunities for girls and weak or non-existent protective and preventive legal frameworks.
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