The Making of a Humanitarian Business Man

BEAUTY

THE MAKING OF A

HUMANITARIAN BUSINESSMAN

WRITTEN BY NJERI MUTHARI

“I am a total and absolute result of my upbringing and a product of my parents,” Tommaso Menini, owner and founder of Jua by Agar, describes his childhood growing up in Milan, Italy. “I looked up to my father, who was this charismatic, handsome businessman. Tomasso’s father was an insurance agent. He watched his father use his public relations skills to build relationships that turned into business opportunities. Equally, his mother was an influence, telling him from an early age that she was not raising an ordinary man.

Just like his father, Tommaso became a charismatic businessman, starting Agar in 2018. Tommaso’s father took him around while he talked to clients. As a result of these seemingly casual talks, his father sold insurance to many of the nightclubs in Milan.

“I wanted to be like that.” So, after studying international business in Australia, Tommaso came back to Italy to work with his father. “Ten months in, I could feel that this was not what I wanted to do. So, I told my dad I wanted to go back to Australia.” Tommaso went back to Sydney and worked for a year after his father fully understood and supported his choice.

“While in Australia, I realised that even that was not what I wanted.” With this realisation, Tommaso packed his bags and moved to a remote town in Tanzania, Musoma. He had always had a humanitarian mind; while at university, he took a double humanitarian major-the only international business student with two humanitarian majors. “The subject that I did the best in, by far, was African politics.” This sparked his curiosity about African history. So, he followed his passions and found an opportunity to do an internship in Tanzania.

Growing up in Milan, Tommaso had a speech impediment; he stuttered. When he was younger, he was often bullied for it. “Eventually, I got too big for the bullies to mess with.” Though the bullies could no longer target him, it did not stop them from bullying others. Tommaso found it hard to sit back and watch, so he used his size to protect other children. As he learnt about African history, he was drawn to the desire to make an impact in Africa’s most remote places.

The Robbery. “The first two weeks in Tanzania and it seemed as though Africa did not want me, as much as I wanted Africa.” He got salmonella the first week and a bladder infection the next. “After being in Tanzania for a month, being sick, and the internship not working out, I decided to count my losses and go back to Italy to work with my dad.”

“I was not doing well; during this time a Mexican priest took me in and fixed me up. For two weeks, he spread word around that an Italian guy was looking for work.” Nothing had come up, so Tommaso threw in the towel, and so did the priest. At the end of the month, they were both set to travel to Nairobi, Kenya. Tommaso was all packed up to go with the priest and catch a flight home. The night before their departure, Tommaso was watching a football match at a bar. He suddenly got a phone call; the person on the other line told him that there was a white guy on a motorbike going from hotel to hotel looking for him. A little after the call, this guy burst into the bar Tommaso was sitting in. He walked straight up to Tommaso, still with his helmet on, and said, “Are you the italian guy?”

“It looked like a robbery,” Tommaso recalled

“I said yes. He asked me if I could teach.

I said, as a matter of fact, I could.” Tommaso was hired on the spot to teach students geography and history. For a term of three months, Tommaso taught students in a local school in Musoma, Tanzania. “That experience confirmed to me that I could work in rural Africa. It made me happy and fulfilled, but I was still a businessman and not a teacher.” After the term, he went back home to tell his dad he had found his vocation.

Now Tommaso’s time at the school was over, and he had to look for other ways to stay in the region. Coincidentally, a friend of his was leaving an organisation in Kampala, Uganda, to do his MBA. He flew out to Uganda and joined the NGO; there for six months, he learnt the ropes. “Uganda was great; the people treated me with incredible respect while I learnt from them.” After this, he got another job in Karamoja, the North East of Uganda, a dry and remote area. There, he put his business degree to work. He trained the locals to set up different kinds of income-generating activities, from selling spare parts to opening public toilets, you name it.

The Mal d’Africa. A year into his time in Karamoja, Tommaso decided to invest his time in Australia again, to gain residency status. During this time, Tommaso met the mother of his son, a Kenyan.”I had what we call in Italian ‘mal d’Africa’; it cannot be translated, it is sort of like a yearning, but it is used as a nostalgia or heartache for home, sort of like homesickness. My heart was in Africa and I wanted to go back.” Straight after his son Dante was born, they moved to Kenya and back to Africa, where Tommaso felt he belonged.

While looking for work in Kenya to be close to his son Dante, his experience in the arid lands of Karamoja in Uganda landed him a job in Isiolo, a town in North Eastern Kenya. “Working in Isiolo came with its challenges; it was arid, insecure, and had poor infrastructure, but we made it work.” Tommaso, at this time, had learnt a lot from the nomadic tribes and people living in these dry and arid areas of East Africa. For two years, he worked as a programmes coordinator, creating income-generating activities, including capacity building, and other business-related ventures for the community. In those two years, Tommaso saw a lot of potential, and he wanted to be a part of the development.

“At first, in 2017, I invested in someone’s company. Within two months, they had misappropriated two million shillings. I had to count my losses. I had lost all the capital I had, and I didn’t know what to do. I gathered myself and the remaining resources left of the company, got a lawyer, and removed myself from that situation. My mother, who had given part of that money, said to me, ‘Look at this experience as your MBA.’ I took that and ran with it.

From this experience, Agar, African Agency for Arid Resources Limited, was born.”

Tommaso had spent years in the arid lands of East Africa learning about the land and the people. In this time, he learnt about the raw materials in the area, gum arabic, frankincense, and myrrh. “I wasn’t going to compete with the locals; they are brilliant and can move anything. We thought that we could be a commodity agency, but we knew we couldn’t win over the Somalis in the area, so we re-strategised.”

Tommaso realised that he could distil the frankincense and myrrh into essential oils, so in 2018, when Agar started, it modelled from only dealing with raw commodities to making essential oils with frankincense and myrrh, as well as eucalyptus, since it is also available in Kenya. In 2019, we were ready to expand I pitched my idea to a Japanese investor to export gum arabic and resins, both raw and distilled

The Not So-Surprise Meet Up. “I used to go to the gym with a friend of mine in Parklands. While we were catching up, he told me that he’d just received funding from a Japanese investor. I immediately asked him how I could do it. He explained that they were extremely private, and the only way they might consider an opportunity was if I just so happened to be at the same place they were meeting later and pitch my idea. That is exactly what we did.” Tommaso was introduced, pitched his idea, and ‘boom’ — the Japanese investor bought the idea, and Agar had its first investor. He gave Agar $150,000.

Tommaso had his lucky first break. He went to the field and set up a network of agents and collectors to allow Agar to expand. By the end of 2019, they had launched their first brand of essential oils. After this, Tommaso applied for grants from the German Embassy and the British Embassy, all of which, even after a few unsuccessful applications, were eventually successful.

COVID hit businesses hard in 2020, but Agar stayed afloat by selling essential oils to HealthyU. “During this time, we also began to set up Jua’s Aloe division, which has now become so prominent.

We started approaching hotels in Nairobi, and in 2022, we secured deals with the Fairmont and Mövenpick hotels, which gave us the push we needed.”

Restoring the landscape. “Jua means sun in Swahili. We named it so because the sun in Samburu and Marsabit rules those areas, and Jua is connected to those lands in the North.” It is hot and dry, and the land seems barren, but this is where Jua’s raw materials come from, and where Jua is investing in the community.

Agar’s principles are empowerment, biodiversity, conservation, sustainability, and landscape restoration. Agar works with NGOs and trusts that collaborate with the communities, giving them aloe seedlings. The NGOs then empower the pastoralists to grow the aloe. When the aloe is ready Agar buys from the local farmers. In arid areas such as the North, where the land is dry, aloe can thrive with minimal water and on infertile land. The farmers nurture the aloe for two to three years before Agar returns to purchase their harvest. This model has changed lives in the North. An acre of aloe can bring a farmer about 60,000 to 80,000 Kenyan shillings from selling just the leaves.

Aloe also works as a land restoration tool.

Where the land was once seen as barren, it can now be used to create employment and empower the community. Agar also buys frankincense and myrrh from the locals. In Laikipia and Samburu, Agar purchases aloe leaves and sometimes powder from a group of Maasai women. From these raw materials, Jua creates some of their cosmetic products.

Jua is intentional in supporting local farmers, impacting some of the most remote communities in northern Kenya. There is so much about Kenya that remains unknown, and so much that the North can offer the world. Jua is ensuring that these resources do not go to waste.

Jua is expanding, aiming not just to bring impact and development through retail, but soon through opening a wellness centre. Jua wants to heal the body using these Kenyan-sourced ingredients. The experience would give people a feel of Kenya’s lands and the warmth of her sun.

“Even if I wasn’t doing Jua, I would still want to be in development. Maybe in waste management or biofuels – something that would make an impact here in East Africa.”

Tommaso is also passionate about teaching and giving business owners the tools to create successful businesses in Africa. Teaching and coaching on compliance, Tommaso shares skills that he wishes someone had given him when he was starting out.

When Tommaso left Italy for Australia, he was a young man determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, guided by his mother’s wisdom. Few could have imagined that his journey would lead him to some of the most arid and remote places in East Africa. Even fewer could have foreseen the remarkable impact Jua would have on these communities. “Sometimes, as I lay in bed at night or rest on the couch after a long day, I feel like I’m wasting vital time-time I could use to create more impact, because there’s still so much to do.”

Tommaso describes himself as “a man of purpose,” and one of his greatest motivations is his son, Dante. He specifically requested that this piece be dedicated to him. □