Government Trade Program Transforms North West Beekeeper Into Export Success

The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), working alongside the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), enrolled a North West beekeeping enterprise in a formal bilateral trade programme, with results that illustrate what targeted government intervention can achieve for emerging exporters.

The Partnering in Business with Germany Programme is designed to strengthen trade and investment ties between South Africa and Germany. Bee African, a women-led honey operation near Brits run by Mems Ramaila, is among the enterprises the dtic selected for the initiative. The programme’s mandate is explicit: connect qualifying South African producers with international markets, technical expertise and investment partners. In Bee African’s case, it delivered on all three.

Ramaila’s entry into beekeeping was unplanned. A conversation with a German tourist at a Vilakazi Street restaurant in Soweto in 2019 led to an introduction to internationally acclaimed honey judge Arie Krieke, who spent three weeks at her lucerne farm that same year transferring beekeeping and honey production knowledge. Ramaila had already researched the sector independently and identified it as a venture with strong income-generating potential alongside environmental and socio-economic benefits. The mentorship accelerated what she had already set in motion.

The dtic-GIZ programme then provided the institutional scaffolding. A three-week visit to Germany in 2025 gave Ramaila access to market intelligence and international networks she could not have reached independently. More concretely, she secured a Memorandum of Agreement with Kriel Honig, a respected German beekeeping company. In February 2026, Kriel Honig’s owner, Utha Bonowsky, spent a month in South Africa training the Bee African team in value addition and product beneficiation, shifting the operation’s focus beyond raw honey.

The commercial results are measurable. Bee African now operates more than 50 beehives and manufactures premium beeswax candles, honey condiments and specialty wellness products. The company employs three people and has diversified into beekeeping equipment manufacturing and customised gift boxes, while generating additional revenue through educational farm experiences. Major shopping centres have invited the company to showcase its goods, a market signal Ramaila describes as moving faster than anticipated.

By contrast, structural barriers remain. Ramaila identified land access as a critical constraint for black producers seeking to expand in a sector that remains heavily male-dominated. She also noted that South Africa relies substantially on imported honey, a gap that domestic producers, with adequate support, are positioned to close. The accountability question for government, then, is whether the programme’s reach is sufficient to address those systemic barriers at scale, not only for individual enterprises that gain entry.

Bee African’s educational work adds a further dimension to its public footprint. The operation regularly hosts school learners to teach pollination, biodiversity and sustainable agriculture, embedding environmental education alongside commercial activity.

Ramaila attributed the company’s trajectory directly to the combination of early international mentorship, formal government trade programme support, and the strategic partnerships that followed. Whether the dtic-GIZ programme can replicate that outcome for other women-led and emerging producers in the beekeeping value chain is the question its administrators will need to answer as the initiative continues.