Tapiwa Guzha

Tapiwa Guzha was born in Zimbabwe, and went to study in Cape Town. While there, he started making Tapi Tapi ice cream, and opened a dessert shop in the Observatory area. The ice cream flavours include the more traditional food culture and flora of Africa.

Tapiwa Guzha

Tapi Tapi, – an ideophone that directly translates from the Chikorekore dialect of the Shona language in Zimbabwe, meaning ‘sweet sweet’.

Personal Details

Born: Harare.

School / Education

Primary:
Secondary:
Tertiary: University of Cape Town, to PhD, molecular biology.
Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Stellenbosch.

Service / Career

2018 - Tapi Tapi started. Online sales of the product. To get a sense of the market.
Later, café opened in Observatory, Cape Town. Under Tapi Tapi, Guzha also makes art and records a podcast.
2023 - Used his PhD in Molecular Biology to make more than 600 inventive ice cream flavours, ranging from baobab to edible clay and bitter leaf. ^[1]

Events

Flavours - flavourites:

Rondo - vanilla and edible clay. Edible clay is often eaten by pregnant women or anemic people, who carry a craving for edible clay often attributed to an iron or calcium deficiency.
Nhopi - roasted pumpkin and dark chocolate. This flavour is inspired by the pumpkin peanut butter puree of some Zimbabwean cuisines, a delicious snack or sometimes a whole meal and enjoyed sweet or savoury any time of the day.
Mweya - Rooibos and imphepho smoke.
Thiakry (degue) - millet couscous and sour milk and comes from West Africa.
Mowa - Amaranth greens and yellow plum, a flavour found across the Africa. ^[2]

In his grandmother's garden in his youth, he was surrounded by indigenous produce such as Baobab, fennel, monkey orange, and masawu fruit. Tapiwa experiments with ingredients such as wild roots, avocados, and okra. Tapi Tapi’s sugar cones are made with millet, cassava, sorghum, maize, and plantain flour. ^[3]