By Lebone Rodah Mosima
Two weeks into a Mechanical Engineering degree at Wits University, Thiofhi Muthikhitha realised he was studying for the wrong career.
A classroom exercise asking new students to reflect on whether their chosen fields matched their backgrounds prompted Muthikhitha to reconsider a life already deeply rooted in farming.
“That session completely changed my life. Soon after I narrated my story, it suddenly dawned on me that growing up in a village where I was assisting my parents in practicing farming successfully without any academically acquired skills and knowledge, agriculture would have been my natural choice for a field of further education,” Muthikhitha said.
He abandoned Mechanical Engineering and enrolled for an Agricultural Engineering degree at the University of Venda, where the course had just been introduced. He became its first and only student for that academic year.
Years later, Muthikhitha holds a doctorate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, runs agricultural consultancy Agricre — short for Agriculture and Rural Engineers — and owns a 27-hectare macadamia farm near Makhado in Limpopo.
The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic), which profiled Muthikhitha this week, said the entrepreneur had built a business spanning agricultural consulting, farming, agro-processing and exports.
“It has been a long journey, but I am grateful that everything I went through has been worth its while. My trials and tribulations, and labour of love for what I believed in and am passionate about, have yielded good returns. I always tell people that agriculture found me,” Muthikhitha said.
After establishing Agricre, he spent several years helping macadamia, avocado and honey farmers connect with markets.
His business took a significant step forward in 2022 when he partnered with British conservation charity Rainforest Concern to establish a foundation aimed at training farmers in sustainable fruit-production methods.
“Through the foundation we managed to bring together 53 subtropical fruit farmers around the Vhembe district in Limpopo and trained them on productive and sustainable farming methods. We also used Radio Phalaphala to extend our training to a wide range of farmers. At one point our 30-minute educational programme that was broadcast at 4:30 in the morning had 54 000 listeners,” Muthikhitha said.
The initiative later developed into a commercial opportunity for Agricre.
“Our work as a foundation developed into a business deal in which our business, Agricre marketed fruits produced by farmers that we had developed into sustainable and profitable farmers,” he said.
A further opportunity opened in 2023 when the dtic assisted Muthikhitha to spend three weeks in Germany through the Partnering in Business with Germany Programme.
The programme, a partnership between the dtic and the German government through the German Corporation for International Cooperation, commonly known as GIZ, is aimed at promoting trade and investment links between Germany and South Africa by training and mentoring emerging South African exporters seeking access to the German market.
“While in Germany I had successful negotiations with representatives of Rewe, a supermarket chain in Germany with around 3 800 stores across the country. We subsequently clinched a deal with their distributor that saw us exporting 518 tonnes of macadamia nuts to Germany, with the help of mainly the small-scale farmers that we had worked with,” Muthikhitha said.
The deal convinced him of the commercial potential of macadamias and prompted him to buy his farm near Makhado.
According to the dtic, the 27-hectare property has 11,700 macadamia trees with a production capacity of 37 tonnes of nuts. It employs six people permanently and as many as 20 seasonal workers.
“I realised that macadamia is the bestselling product of all the subtropical fruits in our area. The agroprocessing part is even more profitable, hence we have quickly moved into processing the nuts and producing pure macadamia nuts oil that is flying off our shelves,” he said.
Agricre has expanded beyond selling raw nuts into processing macadamia oil through cold pressing.
“There is a high demand for the oil because it is produced through cold pressing, meaning that you put the nuts in the machine and press, nothing is added. It is organic. And that is what the market is looking for. Consumers use it for cooking, skin and hair. Beauty parlours are our biggest customers,” Muthikhitha said.
The company is also trying to expand its footprint in domestic and international markets.
In October 2025, Muthikhitha participated in an exhibition in Johannesburg with dtic assistance and secured orders from Japan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to the department.
Agricre is now experimenting with other products derived from macadamia nuts, including milk and flour, while making use of available land on the farm for crop and vegetable production.
“We are also experimenting with new products such as milk and flour that we can produce from our macadamia nuts as part of diversifying our offerings. We are utilising the space available on the farm for crash crops and vegetable production that my wife, Mashudu, who is our sales manager, is responsible for. We are happy to be making a modest contribution in creating employment for the people of Makhado, and it is our plan to grow this company and create more job opportunities,” Muthikhitha said.
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