The history of the name and logo
A blog article by ENZI founder Azariah Mengistu about the origin
of the name and logo of the ENZI brand.
ENZI is a Swahili word and is used throughout East and parts of Central Africa.
ENZI - the meaning and background
We strive to add meaning to everything we do at ENZI. Our name and logo is a great example of this. Years before we ever stepped foot in Ethiopia we had already committed to the name ENZI. Jawad Braye, ENZI’s co-founder, and I grew up together in Kenya so it’s no wonder we ended up using a swahili word for our brand. ENZI is used throughout East and parts of central Africa and has many different meanings. In Kenya it’s most definition is “an era”, “a period of time”, or even “a kingdom”. We have strong belief in the untapped potential of Africa’s people to maximize it’s amazing raw materials. We believe that Africa will come into a new “era” when it begins to own more of the value chain of their commodities. This is what we represent at ENZI. Investing in people to empower them to maximize their value of their commodities. We want to showcase a business model that prioritizes people and promotes the capacity of a new era of Africa.
This is exactly what we stand for at ENZI.
The creation of the logo
4 to 5 years after having our name, we still didn’t have a logo. We had been working on product development in Ethiopia for more than a year, and were still trying to find something with meaning that resonated with our brand. Then one day while Jawad was looking at some Ethiopia text, which he always found fansciating, he noticed unique punctuations. “What’s that?”Jawad asked as he pointed at an Amharic full stop which is called arat netib. I explained to Jawad what it was, and that day he began sketching ideas with arat netib as his inspiration. Within a few days we had our final logo that we use today. We love that it’s inspired by an ancient, indigenous African language and the significant meaning. The same way a full stop comes at the end of a complete thought, our logo represents the end of a complete creative process.
ENZI founder Azariah Mengistu
Jawad Braye co-founder of ENZI
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