From The Ground Up

Sebastian Daniels' Ground Culture is focused on bringing township entrepreneurs into the formal economy, helping bridge the gap in Cape Town with an online store and cafés stocked with products made locally by them.

- By Lillian Roberts

WHAT happens when a 52-year-old beekeeper from the Khayelitsha township in Cape Town meets an entrepreneur born in 1994? Old school meets new energy and honey gets sold at 10 times the rate it used to, as the beekeeper is now connected to the formal market. This is what Sebastian Daniels does best, integrating the informal eKasi economy in Cape Town with mainstream market systems.

Daniels’ parents were both journalists and he had a good upbringing, also at times attending protests with his mom. This was the beginning of understanding how deeply segmented South African society was – and continues to be. Delving into history and Steve Biko, Daniels desired change.

First, he began working with the idea of creating a Stokvel app called Yethu, centered around the country’s famed Stokvel savings concept, where members contribute an amount regularly and receive a lump sum payment. It’s how many in the lower-income groups in South Africa save up for buying furniture, building houses or sending kids to school.

“People were so interested in what we had to offer. But what ended up happening is that we started building a system around the formal economy, and lost track of who our actual customer was in the end,” explains Daniels to FORBES AFRICA.