 Jambé, my brother. Jambosana, Barigani. Missouri sauna. Wow. You speak Swahili? Yes, I do speak Swahili. Actually, I'm coming from the east of the country. I was born there. So my brother's language is Swahili. Here in Kinshasa, we do speak Lingala. And since I'm here a little bit more than 10 years. Since you speak Lingala, I need to say Mbote. Mbote, Mbote Naio. What next? I'm Lawrence. Sorry. Lawrence? Lawrence? Oh, okay. Born and raised in Congo, in the east of Congo, in Kifu. You ever left the country? Yes, I did. I did. Actually, when I was 8 years old, I left. And I used to live quite a lot of my life in Europe, in Belgium. I did travel a little bit over there. So I used to live in Spain. So I speak Spanish also. My best friend is coming from Italy. I learned Italian. So I really do appreciate the languages. So I try to do my best in different languages. And yes, it's been a little bit more than 10 years that we are back in our country. You lived how long abroad? I'm 41 actually. And I lived like half abroad, half in Congo. And you've been back for how long now? A little bit more than 10 years, almost 11. And we came back and we started with our company, with the food juices. As you said that the idea was really to promote it and to produce locally. Because we realized when we came back that quite a lot of products, to say almost 99% of the products were imported. And we got everything. We got a lot of raw material. What do we know just in Africa? Raw material is really interested the entire world. Every outside country come and take it. And they do transform it after and bring it back to us. And we buy it. The fact that you lived abroad knowing that everything is freshly produced from the country. Now being exported abroad and then refined into a finished goods and send it to us here. You lived abroad all your life, right? Quite a lot of. I mean a lot of Africans living here really want to go there. You know to live their best life and they don't even want to come back here. I mean why would you have that and still come back to Africa? Since I left I had that chance to come back every like 2 or 3 months per year. Because my dad still used to live. He did travel a lot in different countries. So I had that chance to go to different countries in Africa. And it was like always for me it was kind of places where I really felt home in Africa. And I do really realize when I came back to Congo that everything we have a lot of opportunity. I didn't create anything. I'm doing fruit juices. Everyone can do that. But just like when I came and I get to a store it was like our entire world was like full of imported fruit juices. And as I remember when I was a baby I was like drinking juices was locally made in Zaire at that time before it became Congo. And just like you know going in the back countries you see a lot of raw material a lot of fruits. And we are not doing any transformation. So we just say okay let's start. We started in my dad's kitchen. And we were like knocking on the neighbor's door or our friend. And they were buying it and we said yeah we are looking for that. That's true that at the beginning my first client was expatriated people. Then Congolese from the diaspora was like used to live outside. But right now with that product was my best seller right now is the ginger. Okay I really get local clients. They are really crazy about that with all the goods that ginger can have. And people are really crazy about that. They like the spicy taste of it. And the roots of ginger that I'm using it's small roots really really spicy. And that one is called ginger from Congo. In Lingala it's Tangawisi Congo. We call it Tangawisi Ginger. What do you get the raw materials from them? Coming from the back country the area is called Congo Central. Most of it come from there. But for example for passion fruit was my second best seller. I get it from there also but as it's periodic I don't have it only years long. So right now the period it's over and I bring it from the east. From where I'm coming from. So it's more like you giving back to where you're coming from. Because those are farmers from where you're coming from. You buy from them and then you refine it into something else. Exactly I transform it and I give it like the additional value we can say. And I really wanted to work like your hands to hands with them. I really need them. I need farmers. And that's true that when at the first step when I met them they were like you know all doing the same stuff all doing vegetables and they were like okay we don't sell quite a lot. And that's for business and that's for life. It's really important to have different income. Not doing only one thing. Okay we are doing fruit juices but we do promoted orders local products from other entrepreneurs. I got a friend in the east who's doing coffee and chocolate. I give him the opportunity to sell it in Kinshasa. Kinshasa is a huge huge and big city. I do imported from there also meat, fruits, vegetables. I do sell fish also just I'm trying to have different incomes. And that's yeah something that I can tell to a lot of people try to do different things. So you do everything in here. Everything is Congolese everything is doing here from stuff that I'm important I'm not doing that. This is my main business fruit juices. I really try to work and to produce 100% Congolese. I didn't have any problem with other communities but just like you know I really want people to know that working together we can do really great thing. Wow that's impressive. That's impressive. So which means that you're also creating employment in Congo. Exactly. How many people work for you right now? About like 20 people directly but just like after as I said you know if you buy jumbo it's not only money who's getting jumbo enterprise. I'm working with farmers and you know all that people they get family they get a lot of people around them. And are Congolese consuming it? Yeah they do start it with that with that product right now and step by step you know just like all the message we wanted for example when we open a bottle over here you have that message. Oh wow. You got the herd with the flag of Congo telling them that you know consuming Congolese it's something patriotic. I would love to see how it's been done maybe if you can take me to the factory but for now this is Bissap. This is Bissap. Can I have it? Sure. This is for you. This is the Congolese flag and I know Bissap but he said the best selling is the ginger but because I know Bissap that's why I want to use Bissap. Let me help you sometimes it's a little bit hard to open. It's hard to. You know. Tell me the truth. I'm going to tell you the truth you know I'm being honest yeah but you see since this is made in Congo I need to speak how do you call it? Lingala. Because I just tasted it and it tastes so sweet very... You have ginger in here? No there is no ginger there is a little bit of mint. We didn't put mint. That's the right word. You know how do you say this in Swahili man? Is it butambu? Exactly that's the point. You got it. Yeah you know when you call... No that's Swahili. I thought that's Lingala. Yeah so butambu a sauna. Yeah. Money to the supermarket. A little bit everywhere in Kinshasa. But I'm... That's true that I have people who's like asking me for that bro. I can send it to you. You can find the link. We are on Instagram for example. Jumbo underscore juice. Ju. J-U-S We are on Facebook. If you go on internet and you run like Jumbo juice DRC you're gonna find auto contact. This person looks like you. This is me. Actually this is me. And who is this? This is my brothers. Who actually looks like Obama. Oh yeah? Oh wow the brother looks like Obama man. So you started this business with your brother? Yeah we started. We are still working together. That's true at the beginning we were like looking for a logo because like we were doing juices as I told you. We were like sending it to the neighbors or friends and we had that name already Jumbo. That's mean hello in Swahili or Burs language. But we didn't have any stickers or anything on it. But like people like get started talking about that and they were calling it the juice from the brothers. Oh okay. So at that time we said okay we're gonna put our head on it and that's from where the idea came. That's amazing. Let's go to the factory. Okay let's go. Thank you. So I'm gonna explain you shortly how do we work over here. We are going in one way direction. Okay. So we come outside with like let's say the less clean stuff and we are going on one way. So here over here we got like two places from washing stuff. When we got the food from outside first of all when we receive it we put it on the scale. We select the best foods. We're gonna wash it first time and put it in the cold room. After every day we just like take it out of the cold room what we need for the day. Okay. We're gonna wash it again before entering and that's always a way to select the best foods because like if one food starts to be like not good anymore it can contaminate the other one. So after we get in here we wash it again. We got different places where we wash material also and then we got different posts. That one here they're cutting mango for the moment. We got also passion fruit. Those passion fruits come from the east of the country because here in Nkinshasta for the moment the season is over but we got different passion fruit over here. We got the yellow one which is bigger with more juice inside but there's one the purple. The taste and the smell it's better. So we try to mix it and when we do the transformation to promote you know to give the opportunity to the farmers to work on other stuff because we need really really more so I just if I can send a message just like to all the farmers here in Congo if they are really interested to do some other stuff I really need ginger, I need passion fruit, I need mango, I need lemon and I need basil flowers, I basically flower all that I can buy everything they can produce because like you know I'm really limited in my progression by missing the raw material. Which means the demand is high now? The demand is higher. I got demand from abroad from outside the country and you know I really want to do that but not starting and not be able quickly to answer the demand you know just like that way you're not like serious and that's not the point. But my dream and I'm really working every day for that is to put in every country of the world a bottle of juice where it's right coming from Congo. Here they do cut and take what we have inside. We got like small machine, it's not really industrial yet it's health, health and you know manual. But actually it started from your kitchen and now you are here. Exactly. So which means bigger things ahead. Yeah, we are growing up, you are growing up for sure and so over there here we got the place where they are going to fill it up after. Here we have a machine. Actually all juices are natural. We don't put any additive on it, we don't put conservative but we do pasteurize. We do pasteurize, here it's pasteurized either. So it means that over there first of all it's going with water to clean the machine, okay. After we are going to have juices here full of juice. It's going to enter the machine. It's warming up, we do put the degrees that we need it's going to depend it's between 69 to 72, 73 degrees depending on the kind of juices we use. When the temperature is okay it's handed over here and then we are going to start and fill it up quickly. We do close the bottle and then we put it in the cord room again. Okay, and that's all the production of today. It's going to be sold in the tomorrow until the next day. That's with the pasteurization we keep the DLC it's going to be longer. The difficulty with my juices as we don't put any conservative we keep it the more natural we can. You have to keep it on the corn place. That have to be in a fridge and all that chain have to be controlled. So the test that we made on our juices that more than three months the juices it's okay if it's been kept on the corn place. But to be sure because we know we are in Africa we get a problem of energy all that we put a DLC of one month and a half. But sometimes... That's a spying day. Yeah, exactly. But when we do receive it back if it's been kept on the corn place the juices is still good. What we do at that time we give it. Because we try and we test it. We see if it's still okay. We give it from the child who is in the street. We know that it's still good for consummation. Because sometimes we can have juices. We see that they didn't have to be kept on a good place. So that one we threw it away. What has been the major challenge so far? The major challenge here for example the packaging. It's a big challenge. It's really hard to find good packaging. I have a lot of friends of different entrepreneurs who's doing jam for example. My wife is doing dessert also. The packaging is really tough to have. After starting a business in Africa as we started for example we started like that. Without having any kind of authorization. It's quite easy to start. But after to grow up to be like a big industry. This is difficult. You got a point. You have that impression that you have like the roof. You got a top and you can go after. We need money for example for machine. But we got some people, some investors who came and said okay I got a million dollars and I want to buy that machine who can produce like 10,000 liter per hour. But at that time we refuse it because we don't have hand or fruits for example to do it. Okay we're going to buy that machine and make it work 10 minutes on the day. That's never. And that's if I can give just like some advices to people. Go step by step. Do one step at a time. And don't want to go too fast because you have to think about all that stuff. And to that people, that man who came and wanted to invest like one million dollars I tell him okay you can invest it into agriculture. Because like if you bring me a lot of food, a lot of food that way it's intelligent to buy that machine. And after we're going to make money. So are you planning investing in agriculture someday? Directly no. Because like I'm not a farmer. Even if I'm coming from the east where we are farmers and that's not my job at all. Wow something happened. Yeah this is electricity. This is energy. I mean I'm used to recording because this is the kind of problem that they face you know like production is going on and the country just switched off the light. Come out and let me ask you my next question. If you have something to tell Congolese out there what would that message be? Just to realize that our country is blessed. We got everything. We know that you know we got like gold. We got petrol. We got like everything. We got cobalt. You know all that. Inside it's Congolese. And we do export that even just like no. We didn't even really export. People from outside come and they do export from themselves. And after we buy that. I know that there is a project from the first Congolese phone. We are starting to do it. I feel that right now stuff are changing. There is quite a lot of people. Maybe quite a lot like me coming from who get that opportunity to travel abroad. But even here in Congo I met quite a lot of young people. You know right now with the internet you can learn everything directly online for example. And I think that we have that spirit of entrepreneurs here in Congo because like okay you just have to do it by yourself. Do it by yourself. Find a way to struggle. The women over here in Congo I'm really completely in love with Congolese women because like they work a lot. They are taking care of us, of the children. They are doing business. And we just really have to realize that we got everything over here. We have to consume Congolese to produce Congolese and to be proud of that. But I'm really feeling that stuff are changing. Quite a lot of people are into that mood. And just keep it that way. Do you think that Congolese in the diaspora when the Congolese abroad can help change the face of Congo? I really do believe that. And I see it every day. You know just like when I'm working in Kinshasa I met quite a lot of people just like hey you're here. You're not like in France anymore. No just like man I left. It's just like you know no more opportunities over there and there is everything to do. As I told we are doing fruit juices. Everyone can do that. I didn't create anything. And just like okay we just realized like something we're missing. Okay why there is no more Congolese fruit juices. I know that's a pity. And we say okay let's do it. Just like start doing your stuff. Every people get ideas. And the difference is just like having an idea and keeping it in your mind. There is no value in that. Just like start it. Even if you get like I really love to say that you know I started my business with 100 bucks. It was not really true because like I was at that home and you know I just like but I did start with borders. The first juices it was the borders where we were like having water in my home where they're empty. I was like putting my juice inside and knocking on the neighbor's door. And I start somewhere. Just like from where you are to the first point start it and after you're going to learn. Going step by step is going to be the end. If you had a chance to change one thing in Africa what would you change? Wow. Maybe the way that's just like we see ourselves. I think just that it's a question of mindset. Having just know that maybe that's complex of inferiority that we can have. Just like forget about that. We are just like you know everything the humanity stuff over here in Africa we have to remember that. And as we are capable of everything we can do the same thing and we can do even better. What do we see Jumbo juice in the next five years? That's true that we have a Pan-African vision. If you see on the logo you see on one side you have the map of Africa on the other side you get the map of Congo. That's true that that brand that's two head from Obama and myself my bro and myself we really wanted to do it a brand a Pan-African brand. That's mean that tomorrow we got like some people who is interested to do that in Cameroon or in Ghana for example why not with you Maya. We can do it you know we keep it African one side we put the map of Ghana and we do local produce we really have you know that small circuit for example I don't know if in Ghana I've never been to Ghana if there is no mango or no passion fruit we don't do that but we have another fruit like typically from Ghana and we do promote it and after you know people who is going to travel around Africa they are going to find Jumbo in Ghana one day after they are in Senegal they find Jumbo again and you know that's start to be Pan-African I'm really feeling like an African because I get that chance with my dad we used to work in quite a lot of country in Africa so yes I used to get a chance to live in Senegal in Benin where we discover BISAP here in Rwanda in Congo in Congo Brazzaville so yeah I'm feeling home a little bit everywhere in Africa I just want to say that thank you so much for talking to me thanks to you I mean he already told you guys how to get the juice make sure you check it out the link will be in the description send him a message buy from him and tell him that what Amaya told you to buy from him thank you so much like the video subscribe and be part of the million family and I'm going to see you in the next one I hear Amaya peace out