Entrepreneurship & Innovation
A student agency branding the businesses that stay invisible
Anele Marvellous Khumalo runs Crisp & Co. Creatives, a youth-led branding and media agency working in Bulawayo and at the University of Zimbabwe that has helped 5+ small businesses get started and, as of July 2026, gives 3 students an income.
For the past 20 years, Anele Marvellous Khumalo says, his parents' businesses have put food on the table and paid his fees, his mother selling clothes at a flea market and his father doing school errands. Neither holds an O-level certificate. "Entrepreneurship doesn't discriminate based on background," he says.
He describes Crisp & Co. Creatives as "the living continuation of my family’s story". It is a youth-led branding and media agency working in high-density, low-income areas of Bulawayo and at the University of Zimbabwe, where he is a student. It began as a printing and design hustle and became a formalised agency in 2025. The services run from educational sessions and graphic design to poster and flyer printing, web development and, recently, social media marketing, photography and filming.
“You are the change you want to be either by doing nothing, something or your best”
Anele Marvellous Khumalo
He says the agency has helped 5+ businesses get off the ground by designing their posters and marketing their services, among them a food delivery business and baking businesses.
On campus, he says, students struggle to buy a $1 meal before they sleep. So the agency partnered with student agents. By July 2026, one of the two agents was earning at least $60 a month, a figure he sets against a $25 average monthly grocery budget for most students. As of the same month, 3 students earn from Crisp & Co. through commissions and part-time work.
The problem he is working on is one he says he has seen since childhood: "entrepreneurship is survival for many of us in Africa, but too many small businesses fail because they lack visibility and proper branding."
He wants Crisp & Co. to become a national agency, equipping 100+ small businesses with professional brand identities and marketing support within three years. The goal, he says, "is to tell a story that entrepreneurship can change lives and challenge the narrative that small businesses in Africa don't survive beyond 5 years."