Next up in our achievements series celebrating women working in male-dominated industries, this entrepreneur from Botswana has switched from tennis to chicken wings.
Before Natasha Siku first picked up a racket at nine years old as a part of her primary school’s compulsory sports programme, no one could have predicted that she would be playing for the national team by the time she was a teenager. “I’d never played sports before but it was amazing how quickly I took to it and got really good at it,” she says.
Siku was scouted by a tennis coach who happened to be hosting a training camp at Morule Primary School, where she was a student. She won her first official tournament and was subsequently picked to represent Botswana internationally. That chance meeting with her former coach would help create a sportswoman who’d grow to dominate the tennis and netball scene. “Sports just came naturally to me,” says Siku. “I felt compelled to take it as far as it could possibly go.”
As a female athlete in Botswana I’d become aware that we faced some unique challenges.
Sports would be her “way out” of Phikwe, a bustling town to its occupants, but a fast-paced village to everyone else. She would also be leaving Botswana, where she says she’d already come to realize her options would be capped. “As a female athlete in Botswana I’d become aware that we faced some unique challenges, our tournaments not being prioritized, being overlooked often because of your gender, there always seemed to be a lack of resources too, and I wanted more for myself.”
Possibilities presented themselves the more she leaned into her career. Fellow tennis champion Tapiwa Marobela inspired her to research getting college sports scholarships, after Tapiwa got a scholarship to Florida State University to study and play there. “Tapiwa Marobela really changed my understanding of what was possible through sports,” she shares.
“There’s a lot of untapped potential when it comes to sports people in Africa. I think we have natural athletes but we tend to fail them when it comes to teaching them how to maximize their potential.” Siku didn’t want to drop the ball on herself. She saved money from selling phone credit and snacks and would go to internet cafes to research on how to create portfolios, profiles and reels for international schools and scouts. “I think I must have sent out applications and profiles to about 200 colleges and then I picked the best offer.
Siku carried with her an acute awareness that her story was an exception.
“Sports instilled in me discipline, commitment and consistency. To this day, for everything that I want for my life, these three things remain important.” At 18 years old, she set off into the world to start her journey. “I had to sit my family down and explain to them not just what I’d been doing, but what being accepted on a sports scholarship meant and all that. They were a little apprehensive but they were also in awe of the fact that I’d pulled that off all by myself,” she reminisces. “In the end they let me go”.
