LESOTHO’S FIRST ROSEHIP ICE-CREAM BY NUL INNOVATION HUB SCIENTIST

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It is creamy, it is crunchy, it is yummy, it is tasty, it is healthy, it is homemade—all in one basket. Well, ice creams, by their nature, are dope (very good)! But if they are made from the National University of Lesotho (NUL) Innovation Hub, they must be dopier actually, they are. Find your share at the Innovation Hub tomorrow.

“After all, this ice-cream is infused with Lesotho’s own rosehip fruits, pulled from the plant that beautifies the mountains and foothills of Lesotho,” says Limpho Ntoanyane, the Innovation Hub scientist developing this Ice Cream.

Limpho Ntoanyane is the Innovation Hub girl best known for her famous rosehip tea known as Meso Tea.

However, there came a time when she realised that people needed to use rosehip and benefit fully from it by having more than a tea, “some people are just not tea people, so they miss the benefits of rosehip because they just won’t give tea a chance,” she said.

As a trained nutritionist, Limpho analysed the benefits of rosehip tea while she was still a student at the NUL. Among other things, she found that rosehip was: rich in antioxidents which fight the damage of body cells by free radicals, supports a body’s immune system, protects against heart disease, aid in weight loss, assist in type 2 diabetes and helps reduce pain and inflammation.

Now if we all knew what we were missing by not drinking the rosehip tea, woundn’t we be up in arms, requesting our own fair share? But then, what is delivered to you is as important as the vehicle used to deliver it.

So Limpho figured out yet another vehicle to bring these benefits to you. She knew that while half the people may like tea, another half (if not way more than half) actually likes ice-cream, in fact, those who like ice-cream are really, really crazy about it.

We all know the ice-cream fanatics if we are not part of them.

“I’m one of those,” she said. “I just loooove ice-cream.”

There are many reasons why people love ice-cream. It can take endless kinds of flavours. Think of the many ice-cream flavours you yourself have enjoyed over the years. Apparently, you are about to enjoy yet another flavour—the rosehip one.

Exotic, isn’t it?

Also, ice-cream is good for every season. Ignore those who say ice-cream is for the Summer and enjoy your healthy dose in the heart of Winter, You will never feel more refreshed.

Off all the reasons, here is the biggest. Ice-cream makes all your sadness go away. Science has proven that a bowl of crunchy ice-cream can get you through your blues like after a break-up or through ordinary headaches of life—you can’t be sad on an ice-cream, expert say.

So if you want people to benefit from something as good as rosehip, what a better way to take it to them than through a well prepared and tasty ice-cream?

“That’s what I did,” Limpho said with a smile.

So she turns the rosip into a jam-like substance and infuses it into the ice-cream and, you are ready to go.

It is one thing to have an idea. It is quite another to get that idea implemented. The power of implemetation is what separates innovators from dreamers and intellectuals.

“I found that making ice-cream was not as easy as it sounds,” she said. In fact, making a good ice-cream and getting the recipe right and making sure that it is repeatable is a very tricky thing. It was so challenging that after months of trying, she was about to convince herself to just quit.

But of course she did know that winners never quit!

– And quitters never win!

So she kept moving until one day she realised that she got it. At least she was close to what she was looking for.

Now what next?

A three to four stage process will follow. The first step is the incubation of the product at the NUL Innovaiton Hub. That means the ice-cream will only be available at the Hub for now (please don’t kill us). This will be followed by inviting a few interested investors to join in. “From there, following a process we are learning here at the Innovation Hub, we are going to make our business register as a public company.”

That is where as many people as interested can buy shares and join the bandwagon.

Now, just imagine where this is leading to.

The likes of Molleloa, Sebabatso and Boreleli led by NUL graduates are already producing dairy products like fresh milk, sour milk, yogurts and others. Now we are having an ice-cream. Do you realise that in the next five to ten years, Lesotho shall have a highly developed dairy industry?

Think of the whole chain from animal food producers, to diary farmers to processors like Limpho to retailers like Enrich to you, the ever happy customer

Yep! We are taking over!

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