Benjamin Hauwanga

Who is Benjamin Hauwanga?

Benjamin Hauwanga, commonly known as B.H., is a Namibian businessman. His parents separated while he was a young boy; his mother single-handedly raised him, although his father visited the family regularly. He has eight siblings.

He was fascinated with business at a very young age; as a child he sold indigenous food after school to contribute to the household income while his mother worked as a domestic worker. As with every business, money is the key and the main objective: Whenever he got, he used the change to buy sweets and resold them at school to get more money and increase cash-flow.

At the age of nine, he started cleaning yards and got paid weekly. This was a great incentive for him but later he realized that the money coming in weekly was not enough to buy enough stock to satisfy the demand for the product at school. He arranged to receive the money month-end; that improved the cash-flow and the stock levels. As the cash-flow improved, he bought a bicycle to extend his operations. The bicycle took him three years to pay off.

His first shop was a cardboard-box in front of his mother's house in the black township, called "the Location".