We build the things Namibia runs on.

Aquaculture and Fisheries

Oyster, tilapia and African catfish farming, aquaponics and fish trade.

Namibia is a dry country with a productive coastline and real freshwater systems. Capture fisheries have carried the economy for decades, but wild stocks are under ecological and resource pressure, and the country still imports a great deal of the fish it eats.

Aquaculture is the complementary path. Rather than depending only on what the sea provides, fish are produced under controlled conditions. Namibia already farms tilapia and catfish in freshwater, and the coastline supports oysters, mussels and abalone.

Tru Africa is led by Hiskia Asino, whose academic background is in fisheries and natural resources with advanced study in aquaculture. The company treats fish farming as an industry rather than a hobby: it needs fingerlings, feed, technology, cold chain, processing, transport, finance and skills, and every one of those is a business someone can build.

That is why the group runs a feed plant of its own, and why it works with communities on training as much as on production. Aquaculture is food security, employment and investment at the same time.

Tru Africa Feeds

A Namibian feed brand for fish, poultry and pets.

Feed decides whether a farm works. In aquaculture it is one of the largest operating costs a farmer carries, and Namibia has historically imported most of it. The country's own fisheries authorities have named the cost of imported fish feed as a brake on freshwater aquaculture.

Tru Africa Feeds exists to move that cost closer to the farmer. Three products are made in Namibia and sold under the Tru Quality name.

The purpose is the same in all three: produce quality feed locally, reduce dependence on imports, and keep more of the value inside the country rather than exporting raw material and buying back the finished product.

Ongwediva Guest House

En suite rooms in Ongwediva from N$450 a night.

A quiet place to stay in Ongwediva, four minutes from the shops and built for people who are in town to work as much as for people passing through.

Double rooms are N$450 a night, or N$550 with breakfast. Every room is en suite with air conditioning and a heater. There is free WiFi, CCTV and secure parking, laundry on request, an entertainment area, and a bar and restaurant serving daily meals.

The house fills quickly around the Ongwediva Trade Fair, so book ahead for that week.

Double room

N$450 per night

With breakfast

N$550 per night

Rooms

En suite, air conditioning and heater

Entertainment area

Music and lounging

Private bar

Wine, beer, whisky and vodka

On site

Bar, restaurant, entertainment area

Security

CCTV and secure parking

Bookings

081 305 0008

Construction and Infrastructure

Housing, public buildings and civil works, delivered for private clients and for the public sector.

Seventy three houses at Ekuku in Oshakati, taken from groundwork to final finishes and completed. Bank approved by FNB, Standard Bank, Nedbank and Bank Windhoek.

A housing development is not really about bricks and roofing. Each completed house is somewhere a family becomes stable, and a project of that size needs coordination, skilled labour and attention to detail held steady over a long stretch.

The work also runs into public institutions. Renovations at the National Police Training College asked for a different kind of care: working inside a functioning facility, improving how it looks and how it works without disrupting what it is there to do.

National infrastructure has to be maintained and upgraded continuously if it is going to serve communities for another generation. That is the part of construction the group is interested in.

Chilli Queen

An award winning Namibian hot sauce brand, founded 2019.

Chilli Queen started in a kitchen, not a boardroom. Frieda Asino grew up in Oranjemund fascinated by the chillies in her father's garden, and years later began serving her own sauces at Sunday meals. Guests kept asking the same question, so in 2019 she started selling.

The early batches went to friends and colleagues, in plain bottles, with the flavour doing the marketing. Orders began arriving from outside Windhoek. The range now runs from Lemon and Herb through Chilli and Herb, Hot Chilli, Wild Chilli, Chilli and Cream, and Chilli Oil.

In 2021 Frieda won the Future Females Business School pitch. In 2022 Chilli Queen took the Agra GROW Competition in the industrial category. The United Nations in Namibia has cited the brand as an example of local value addition under Buy Local, Grow Namibia.

The principle has not changed since the kitchen: flavour first, heat second, and if it does not taste exceptional it does not leave the kitchen.

Agriculture and Greenhouses

Drip irrigated greenhouses and climate resilient growing, built for Namibian conditions.

Growing food in an arid country is a question of using water carefully. The greenhouse at Ongandjera was built and commissioned for the Matuwa Family and is producing: drip irrigated, under shade net, designed for the heat rather than in spite of it.

Alongside the greenhouses the group runs aquaponics, where fish and plants are grown in one system and the water does two jobs instead of one. It suits an arid climate, and it works in urban and peri urban plots where there is no room for a field.

Training matters as much as production. A greenhouse someone else built is worth far less than one a family knows how to run, so the work includes teaching people to operate what has been installed.

Ruacana Campsite

A riverside campsite on the Kunene, near the Ruacana Falls.

The campsite sits on the Kunene, a short way from the Ruacana Falls, on the stretch of river that marks the border with Angola. It is green where most of the country is not.

Sites are shaded and the river is the reason to come: hiking along it, fishing in it, and guided visits to the Himba communities nearby for people who want to understand where they are rather than just pass through.

Two further eco campsites along the Kunene are in development, and a NamWater pipeline was laid to the site in 2022 so the water supply is proper rather than trucked.

Renewable Energy

Solar geysers, off grid solar systems and energy efficient lighting.

The pilot with NORED in Ongwediva replaced conventional streetlights with energy efficient LED units and cut power use measurably against the lighting it replaced. Municipal lighting runs every night of the year, so a saving per fixture compounds into a saving a town can budget around.

Alongside that the group supplies and installs solar geysers of 100 to 200 litres. Water heating is one of the largest items on a household electricity bill, and a geyser on the roof takes that load off the grid entirely for most of the Namibian year.

The third strand is off grid solar for places the network does not reach economically. Namibia has the sunlight and the distances, which is the combination that makes off grid supply cheaper than another kilometre of line.

Trade and Investment Advisory

Cross border trade, distribution and investment consultancy across the world.

Namibia catches more fish than it eats, and the value in that is only realised if the product reaches the markets that want it. The group trades horse mackerel, hake, sardines, seal oil and abalone into China, Botswana, Zambia and Angola.

Export is a discipline rather than a transaction. Grading, cold chain, packing, labelling and paperwork all have to hold from the coast to the buyer, and a shipment that fails on any one of them is a shipment nobody pays for.

The same knowledge runs the other way. Businesses looking to enter the Namibian market get end to end advice on how the market actually works, who the counterparties are and what the compliance takes, from people who move product through it themselves.

Research and Development

Alternative feed ingredients, artemia trials and integrated systems.

Feed is the largest operating cost in aquaculture and Namibia imports most of it, so the research starts there. The group works on alternative ingredients that can be sourced inside the country and still hit the protein and lipid figures a farm needs.

A second strand is artemia. Hatcheries depend on live feed for the first stage of a fish life, and Namibia currently buys that in. Trials are running on producing it locally as a supplement for Namibian hatcheries.

The group also works on integrated horticulture and aquaculture systems at the Neudamm Campus, where fish and crops share one water system, and is working toward the development of a national laboratory. A country that cannot test its own feed, water and stock is a country that has to take someone else's word for it.