Our Moon

KOMANI: AN ENTREPRENEUR WITH A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

Hailing from Muchinga Province and raised by a mother working as a subsistence farmer, Komani’s come a long way from his humble beginnings. As well as founding several successful micro-businesses in Zambia’s Central Province, including a small shop providing supplies to his local community, he is now studying towards his Mechanical Engineering degree at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana.

However, Komani didn’t always have the skills he needed to be the entrepreneur he is today.

“Before joining Our Moon, I wasn’t a very sociable person. Our family circumstances often made it difficult to make friends as we moved around quite a lot, and because I spent so much time helping my mother make ends meet, I wasn’t great at time management, either.
For the same reasons as above, as well as the Zambian education system, my team work skills were limited. I had this perception that when you’re working in a team, people won’t pass on the information you need when you need it, or are too busy to help out, so I thought it was better to work alone.

“Our Moon has helped me improve my time management skills, making it easier to juggle my workload with assignments, daily activities and cooking, amongst other things.”

However, Our Moon has changed all of that. On the Young Leaders programme, we were encouraged to work in teams when running projects or studying in groups, and with recruits coming from different tribes from all over Zambia, we needed to work together despite differences in how we respond to certain situations.

These skills have put me ahead of my peers at university. I’ve gone from being unable to construct a coherent sentence to excelling in my literature classes, and an early introduction to citations, plagiarism and paraphrasing meant I could do my university assignments without worry. Our Moon has helped me improve my time management skills, making it easier to juggle my workload with assignments, daily activities and cooking, amongst other things.

Now, I’m studying Mechanical Engineering at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana, combining engineering physics, mathematical principles, and material science to analyse, design and manufacture goods. In particular, I find the design and manufacturing part of the course fascinating because it gives me a deeper understanding of machines’ mechanical principles and operations.

I went on to do an internship at DGM Beverages, where I worked as a Machine Operator. I learnt so many basic operations on their production line: how to set up and use the filler, capping, rinsing and drying machines, inspection lights, and the date code machine.

During my time there, my supervisor resigned and I was temporarily assigned his position of Maintenance  Coordinator. I would plan the daily schedule for the technicians and machine operators, making daily reports and requesting external technicians if we didn’t have the skills inhouse.

On the whole it’s been an awesome experience, and I’ve developed a lot in line with my programme.”
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