Eastern Cape-born former Scorpions head Bulelani Ngcuka is expanding his business empire to this province with a R1,7 billion investment, which includes tomato farming and housing development projects near East London.

Part of this huge economic injection will go to his home village of Middledrift, about 40km from King William's Town.

Plans are afoot to start a dairy farming project in this rural village.

The dairy and tomato farming projects form part of a joint venture between Ngcuka's Amabubesi Investments and dairy farmers from Plettenberg Bay and Tsitsikamma.

This new business venture, which will trade under the name Agri-Amadlelo, has set aside R400 million to fund these projects.

Agri-Amadlelo has earmarked an underutilised piece of land about 10km from the East London airport to set up this tomato farming project.

"We want this land because of its proximity to the airport, as our plan is to produce these tomatoes for export," Ngcuka said.

Once this land has been secured the company will start forming partnerships with surrounding communities.

"We want the communities to benefit from these projects. At this stage we are not sure what these partnerships will look like," he said.

Work on the Middledrift dairy farming project is already under way.

"Middledrift is my village and I am particularly excited about this development. We have already gone there to do soil tests to determine what sort of vegetation we can plant in that area," Ngcuka said.

He is doing the projects in partnership with the University of Fort Hare and the Department of Agriculture.

"For these farming projects we are at least assured of their research skills and their knowledge of the industry," the lawyer-turned businessman said.

Together with Stuart Boucher of Smit Tabata Attorneys, Ngcuka is also investing in a housing project in Chintsa.

The residential project, to be known as Ngwenya village, will consist of 75 plots and will cost about R150m to build.

The project is expected to create at least 500 temporary jobs during the construction phase and a further 150 permanent jobs.

Ngcuka and Boucher are also shareholders at Smith Tabata Attorneys.

Speaking from Jeffreys Bay yesterday during the launch of his third project - a R1,2bn mega shopping mall - Ngcuka said his investment is expected to create thousands of jobs and will go a long way towards alleviating poverty in the province.

"The shopping mall is the only one that is concrete at this stage and I expect construction to start early next year," he said.

The mall, to be built on 15,000m² of land, will have 57 shops and at least 900 parking bays and will create about 150 jobs during the construction phase.

It will be the biggest shopping mall in the Eastern Cape, servicing all the towns outside Port Elizabeth, including Humansdorp and Hankey.

"The location of this mall is excellent. We saw a good business opportunity and decided to grab it."