Homegrown Solutions Are the Best

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli

TRANSCRIPT

Mandla Nkomo Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Deeply Rooted, a podcast about the business of food processing in Africa. My name is Mandla Nkomo and I'm the CEO of Partners in Food Solutions, which is a nonprofit that connects expertise from some of the world's largest food companies across Africa. And today, I'm joined by someone I consider to be a friend, a sister, and an inspiration, Ndidi Nwuneli the president and CEO of the One Campaign. Which is an international, non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for investments needed to create economic opportunities and healthier lives in Africa. She's the founder of Leap Africa. Which is another nonprofit committed to developing dynamic, innovative, and principled African leaders and African Food Changemakers, which provide support for African entrepreneurs to start and scale resilient and sustainable agribusinesses. She's also the co-founder of Sahel Consulting, and AACE Foods, a food manufacturer in Nigeria that makes a variety of foods from flours and spices to snacks. AACE Foods has worked with the PFS, since 2019. So with that, I would like to welcome my sister and friend, Ndidi Nwuneli. Ndidi, how are you?

Ndidi Nwuneli Great to be on the platform with you, Mandla. You're also a role model and we've worked this journey together for a few years now from many, many moons ago visiting farms in southern Africa. So it's great to connect.

Mandla Nkomo Yeah, so I wanted us to start there and a lot of people don't know this because you don't talk about it much that you spent a few months as the West Africa, I think, director of Ford Foundation. And I think at that time you had just come out of consulting and even back then, Ndidi, I could tell that you had an urgency and an itch and an impatience. With the slowness of, of progress in transforming Africa's food and agricultural sector. Do you want to go back there and just tell us how you got to where you are now is, as someone leading the ONE Campaign.

Ndidi Nwuneli Yes, actually, my story in this landscape starts from when I was very young. Agriculture was my favorite course in high school in Nigeria, and I had a farm in my backyard. My first commercial transaction was selling bulk avocados in my local market in Enugu. And so this has always been my first love. Yeah. And when I was going to school for university, I applied to Cornell School of Ag and Life [Sciences]. I applied to the Wharton School, opted to go to Wharton, but always had a passion for consumer goods and food. With LEAP Africa and Ford Foundation, supported entrepreneurs of all kinds, but also entrepreneurs in food and agriculture. But it wasn't actually till 2008 when we had the first food crisis in my adult life that I came face to face with the impact of food insecurity on lives in Africa and how ripple effects in one part of the world affects others, and also clearly the narrative that I heard all over the world that, you know, the face of Africa was a hungry child and the face of poverty was a female farmer from Africa. And these fueled my desire to change the narrative. And to transform food ecosystems on our continent by not only ensuring transparency, accountability, but also really addressing the policy dimensions, unlocking new finance flows, but also investing in innovation, storytelling, and helping entrepreneurs scale.

Mandla Nkomo Amazing, and I think it would be fair to say that your current role as, you know, the president of the ONE Campaign, you know, places you in a unique position to be able to do that at a very large and global scale. Do you want to talk to us about your organization's priorities for solving exactly those problems that you're talking about on the African continent, and broadly.

Ndidi Nwuneli Yeah, so the ONE Campaign was established over twenty-one years ago. And our mission is to fight for the investments to ensure economic opportunity and healthier lives. And our vision is that Africa is an equal player. And what we are really committed to is not only fighting for funding and support to ensure that we achieve growth in our continent, but that we unlock the bottlenecks that limits this growth. And clearly the food and agricultural landscape is such an important one for Africa and for ONE, because, you know, healthy food drives healthy lives. Nutrition is linked to healthy food. And we definitely see that, but healthy food and the food ecosystem also generates economic opportunities, jobs, value addition, and growth, which allows us to then also achieve more investments in homegrown solutions to ensure healthy lives. So I think we talk about food from so many vantage points and lenses, but at ONE, what we're really focused on is really unlocking the catalytic patient capital and removing the bottlenecks to ensure that we can grow this sector 100 times. And that's why our mission and vision aligns well with yours at Partners in Food Solutions, because if we can change narratives about Africa, if we can galvanize the right financing, entrepreneurs thrive. And then they can scale their businesses, which in turn creates better jobs. Homegrown solutions are the best. And that's why I've always been a fan of the work of Partners in Food Solutions, because for me, I think Africa can feed itself on the world. And our food is some of the best food in the world. And so that is key to what we do at ONE, galvanizing us as a people telling our stories globally, building bridges between our G7 partners and the African continent. But also elevating African voices and African issues.

Mandla Nkomo I mean, I couldn't agree with you more, Ndidi. And, and I know that, , you're the kind of person that doesn't just talk the theory of these things, but you, you get your hands dirty and get stuff done. And, tell us about how your work in setting up AACE Foods. I met your newly minted CEO in Nigeria late last year, and I was really impressed that you had been able to convince someone from a large corporate, to come and join and lead AACE. But, but this business, you've been in the trenches and what inspired you to start AACE. And what problem were you trying to solve with it?

Ndidi Nwuneli So thank you for your kind words about AACE. So we started AACE about fifteen years ago, and really I was driven by, and my husband and I are co-founders, were driven by this realization that fifty to 60% of our fruits and vegetables in Nigeria were being wasted because of post-harvest losses that we had such high rates of malnutrition at the time. It was one out of every three Nigerian child was stunted. And that we were highly dependent on food imports. When we would go to our local supermarkets, about eighty to 90% of the food on the shelves were imported, and yet 60% of our population worked in food and agriculture. So there were just so many contradictions, but also huge opportunities for impact. And so what we decided to do was to say, can we create a company that would source locally and process for the local market, thereby not only displacing imports, but improving the nutritional status of our people and generating more value for our farmers. And when we started, we actually did mostly B2B, business-to-business sales, where we're selling bulk products, spices, seasonings to FMCGs. Fast-moving consumer goods companies that had largely imported these spices. They didn't even know that they existed on the ground. And then gradually we have introduced retail products, a range of spices, snacks, Jara Crunch, which Partners in Food Solutions was very instrumental in us creating. It's a very affordable, healthy, nutritious snack for children. And then a soya maize blend, which is a corn soya CSB for fighting moderate malnutrition. Um, and we have continued to serve, , B2B clients. We have about twenty-five SKUs in our retail markets, our open-air markets and retail stores. And we also export products, not only in bulk, but to the diaspora populations across the world.

Mandla Nkomo Amazing. And, I mean, I've come across some of your products in most unexpected places. I was in the UK sometime last month and I found some AACE products there. And I think when I listened to you talk about what the ONE Campaign tries to do, which is to kind of try and bring, you know, patient capital into the spaces that you and I work in, and then listen to you talk about, you know, responding to the opportunity and the need that you saw in AACE, it's very clear then that finance on its own is not enough. Having good entrepreneurs is not enough. But there needs to be some other technical facilitation. And, you mentioned our work with yourselves, we've been working with you guys since 2019. So you're already an established business. But why did you at that time as a business feel like you needed some of the expertise that PFS could provide to you guys?

Ndidi Nwuneli I think the amazing thing about our ecosystem is that there are significant gaps when it comes to technical advice, innovation and support. Especially if you want to build a world class organization and you are trying to figure out components of that. And I think the first time we actually engaged with the Partners in Food Solutions was when we're trying to buy a sterilizer for our spices. At the time there was no other company using natural steam sterilizers in Nigeria.

Mandla Nkomo Wow.

Ndidi Nwuneli Many other companies were using other forms of sterilization methods that were actually harmful. And we wanted to use steam sterilization because it's safe. And it doesn't alter the color of the spices. And so the process of purchasing something so significant and so expensive, we needed expertise. We didn't want to make a mistake because there are lots of, you know, missteps and interestingly, the first set of quotes we got, and the first payment we made, the company actually could not meet the specifications and whenever they tried. So it was, you know, multiple steps involved and having experts on the other side of the phone, you know, negotiating with us, challenging, getting in, you know, insights and, expertise was just priceless. And so for me, that was the first time we realized there's no one in Nigeria who can help us with this procurement because we just don't have that capacity or experience. And the second was when we wanted to design a new product. And I have to tell you, , I've worked in, not only in consulting, but also shift policy in terms of nutrition. And we always talk about nutritious food having to be affordable, acceptable, available, accessible. And the concept of accessibility and affordability in a context like Nigeria and many, many emerging economies is that you have to make a snack that's less than twenty cents. Now, to be able to create a snack at that price point Is difficult. And so you need a lot of support where you're kind of switching in and out of products. You're getting support and trying to say, okay, instead of using beans, can you try cassava? Instead of using cassava, can you try soya? Instead of using... And I mean, it has to look nice. It has to taste nice. It has to be an extruded snack. It's for kids. It has to look like cheese balls, but really a lot healthier. The packaging has to be fun. And so having a team work alongside us to create a product that was priced under twenty cents. That tastes good and looks good was a very difficult process. It took us almost five years to actually crack that nut and thankfully the product is in the market today and we really applaud the volunteers at Partners in Food Solutions and the team for working alongside us. And the sad reality is we need to scale that capacity and build out that capacity so that many more organizations can benefit.

Mandla Nkomo And that's exactly where I wanted to go to say, you almost wish you could, you could bottle it right. And, just distribute it, you know, all over, all over the continent because it feels to me that and I've seen this Ndidi I've traveled across all the eleven countries where PFS is working. I've met quite a few of the entrepreneurs that we support and at every factory, I kid you not, I found redundant equipment that they bought, paid good money for, but hardly ever used because the specs were not right and the seller wanted to make a quick buck and run. So getting the right kind of advice on equipment, on process lines and so forth is important. The second one is what you reference, which is this whole issue of If it is true that Africa has got this, you know, big need for nutrition. How do we make nutritious food Affordable, like you said, but also be in an attractive format that is the first thing kids cry for when they see it. You're absolutely hitting the nail on the head. And what ideas do you have? Because I know you then took that and said, okay, let me try and inspire the next generation of food processors through the African Food Change Makers. How do we tap into that network, pent up energy of entrepreneurship on the continent, so that it can match this available expertise that organizations like ours can provide.

Ndidi Nwuneli Yes. So we basically, I created African Food Change Makers primarily, like you said, because of the recognition that there is so many entrepreneurs working in, in silos. Suffering in silence and really feeling really alone. And so we created a one-stop shop where we could provide them with data, funding, access to research. Communities of support that could really enable them to start and scale their businesses and actually building on your expertise and actually I hope this is an idea you take on, Mandla, was during the food system summits that Agnes Kalibata led, I came up with this idea of a global food innovation hub that would be a virtual hub that would enable. People to share insights on recipes from other markets, insights on equipment, and, and actually be able to be matched with labs and food technologists in different parts of the world. And enable them to have, you know, to scale that innovation piece. Even things like aflatoxin levels, you know, to imagine that all of us in Lagos have to go to IITA [International Institute of Tropical Agriculture] to be able to get insights on our aflatoxin levels of our product. You know, for me, it's just not acceptable. So they'd also have kind of like where you can find the lab, where you can find the support. So I actually would love to see you guys take that on to the next level. That was a concept that I actually shared with the founders of Partners in Food Solutions, because I think for me that African Food Changemakers is filling one part of it and I would love to see how we can scale some of that great work because, you know, while they've benefited from your support for all these years, there are many other organizations who are at different stages who would benefit as well.

Mandla Nkomo So Ndidi, I knew it was the risk having you on this podcast because I knew you would leave me with an assignment to do. And, you have totally, you have totally delivered and I take it up fully because we, we fully believe that, we need to create what I call a fair access, to information and technology about food processing fair in the sense that it must be findable.

Ndidi Nwuneli Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mandla Nkomo And when you find it, it must be accessible.

Ndidi Nwuneli Yes, yes.

Mandla Nkomo And it shouldn't be so bespoke that it is not interoperable and

Ndidi Nwuneli Exactly.

Mandla Nkomo it must be reusable. And I think as PFS, we've looked and found that in our repository, we've got over 500 documents that represent sixteen years of interfacing with food processors on the African continent, over 2000 of them. And in that time, we've done a lot of projects with companies like AACE, like COMACO and others. And now we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We should instead be looking at how do we make it easy, leveraging current technology like AI and so forth, natural language processing, for this information to be readily accessible to people who need it, So that even if they don't become PFS clients, at least they can go to a place where they can find some basic information that will point them in the right direction. So challenge accepted.

Ndidi Nwuneli Awesome. Thank you so much.

Mandla Nkomo Yeah, I really appreciate that. I mean, you mentioned the youth, especially with your African Changemakers, because I've met these teams across the continent in East Africa and Southern Africa and West Africa. They are mainly young people. And because I've got young adults in my house as well, they always say to me that, you know, Dad, you don't get us. You are wired very different. How do we make sure that we are tapping into this demographic dividend on the African continent? That must respond to the food security and nutrition challenge on our continent. And we can still provide, you know, our years of experience in a manner that they will accept and not think, oh, you guys are just not woke or cool enough.

Ndidi Nwuneli Yes, I think that that's the beauty of what we've seen at African Food Changemakers is the potential to actually attract young people. And we've, we've been really fortunate to have such an interest. You know, I think technology is what young people understand. They are not attracted to this concept of poor and cutlass farming that their parents engaged in. But leveraging technology and innovation, they allow to leapfrog and they encourage to do so. So at African Food Changemakers, we've started BRACE [Building Resilience Against Climate and Environmental Shocks] which helps young people who are passionate about the climate Ag food nexus to benefit from e-learning. We have another program called scaling up trade, which fosters trade, but the one I'm most excited about that I started was called Leading Women in Food Fellowship, which brings women. Who are in finance, in entrepreneurship, who are storytellers, who are chefs, who are cooks together to form a sisterhood. And I think that narrative piece It's so critical. I mean, we did this whole documentary on Jollof Wars. We've done, you documentaries and podcasts which really changed narratives and get seeing young Africans really excited about food and saying I'm a chef and having young African sounds think it's cool to be a chef. I think it's really just wonderful. And that's where the storytelling and the narrative shift has to occur to get more young people excited. About the opportunities in this sector to not only create wealth, to ensure jobs, but also to increase our pride and our sense of worth as Africans.

Mandla Nkomo Well, I think you're hitting the nail on the head. I mean, one of the things that has re-emerged in popular discourse is this idea that there's a diversity of foods on the African continent, but If we look at what everyone consumes in the media, even in Africa, we are consuming images of foods that often require us to import raw materials from other places of the world. What can we do to better position, in my view, the diverse foods that we have on the African continent, the so-called forgotten crops or the value crops that are coming from different parts of the continent. What can we do, yourselves as ONE, when you're directing capital, and for ourselves as we are identifying and supporting companies.

Ndidi Nwuneli Well, there are a couple of things. I think from, , ONE's perspective, that changing narratives of Africa from the image of Africa, bringing a hungry child to a successful female entrepreneur. It's so key. And that's where the power of storytelling, podcasts, media engagement has a critical role to play. And as I mentioned, , at one, we've actually, you know, partnered with a lot of storytellers. We have a diaspora council. We have a faith council. We have a youth engagement across the world in all our G7 countries. Across the world, we're changing narratives. So in the US, we've had events, prayer sessions, but also even displaying and celebrating our food and food contributions to the world. So I think there are moments for that. I'm very proud that I got Bill Gates to make fonio on the goalkeeper stage.

Mandla Nkomo Oh wow.

Ndidi Nwuneli With Chef Pierre Thian.

Mandla Nkomo wow.

Ndidi Nwuneli And we talk about fonio. Acha is a forgotten crop, but it's such a nutrition crop and it's a great alternative to quinoa.

I partnered with Afriex Bank for their Canex. And we also had Professor Rama make food on a global stage with African chefs from all over Africa alongside some Hollywood actors like Boris Kodjoe. So I think it's really important to create those moments where food is cool. Forgotten foods are celebrated. And not only do we talk about them, we also introduce the farm to fork concept. Where is this food grown? Who grows it? Why do they grow it? Why is it from the rich shores of Africa? And we've done a range of podcasts, um, through African Food Changemakers. One is on rooibos. It's such a powerful podcast because

Mandla Nkomo It is, right?

Ndidi Nwuneli People love rooibos tea all over the world, but they don't know that it's from the hills of South Africa. Or that teff is a great alternative to flour, teff from Ethiopia. Or that okra is an Igbo name, that the word okra is actually my language and that

Mandla Nkomo Oh, wow.

Ndidi Nwuneli It was adopted in the annals of Virginia in the 1600s. And that Coca-Cola was made with Cola nuts from West Africa. That's why it's called Coca-Cola. So you can go down the list. There's so much we can be proud of. And I think awareness is key. Storytelling is critical, but then also solving the route to market problem. We need to get our products on global shelves. We want people to walk into grocery stores in Washington, D.C. and say, I'm looking for chocolates from Ghana. You know, I'm looking for rooibos tea from South Africa. And that linkage is really critical. That value addition in our countries is really critical, coupled with the addressing the barriers to getting on shelves, the barriers to awareness, and then the infrastructure, um, supports that ONE drives around from a policy dimension as well by partnering with the World Bank for IDA21 [ 21st replenishment of the International Development Association ], for example, to build out that trading infrastructure that's required.

Mandla Nkomo I think spot on. And I always joke with people, Ndidi, that if we can get the whole world to dance to Amapiano or to Afrobeats, Surely we can put something in their hand from Africa that they'll consume every day and create a lot of value back on African farms. So I fully subscribe to that and I think we must do it. I want us to wrap up now, Ndidi, and I want to give you a, a minute to, maybe, you know, share some parting thoughts around, um, if you had the magic wand, and I know you're a woman of faith and you don't need magic, but if you had the magic wand, , what could you do that could transform the African food system for eternity? What would be that one thing or two?

Ndidi Nwuneli I think there are two things. One is a real commitment to ecosystem policymaking in Africa that puts African consumers first. I think many of our countries keep on getting it wrong, with a focus on, you know

Mandla Nkomo Exports, exports, exports.

Ndidi Nwuneli export led growth or a focus on, you know, what the development partners or foreign partners want, as opposed to what African consumers want. I think that's really critical. We have a continent that's big enough. It's a huge market just for African products. And the commitments to supporting locally led growth is critical. The same with, you know, homegrown foods, school feeding programs that are climate smart, that are homegrown. That was transformative in Brazil. So when I talk about ecosystem policies that enable growth, value addition and consumption for our people, I think that's really number one. And number two, it really would be a commitment by a  lot of key stakeholders to invest in, in technology and knowledge transfer for value addition. And this is why the work you do is so critical. I think in Africa, in our ecosystem, SMEs that process food are such critical players and they just need support to scale. And if they scale, they influence farmers, they influence consumers, but they need a technical know-how. They need catalytic and patient capital, and they need enabling policy environments to thrive. And I would put them at the center of design.

Mandla Nkomo Amazing, amazing. Well, this has been a fantastic chat. I still remember that when we were crisscrossing the farmlands of Southern Africa, the conversations were this intense. They were very thoughtful and, and thankfully a lot of action resulted from them. So Ndidi, I want to thank you for your time and thank you for gracing our podcast and for allowing us to tap into that amazing amount of experience and passion that you have for all things food and Africa. Thank you so much, Ndidi.

Ndidi Nwuneli Thank you so much. Really a pleasure to engage with you and keep up the great work.

Mandla Nkomo Wow. What an amazing conversation about the business of food in Africa with Ndidi Nwuneli. Thank you so much, Ndidi, for coming on, really appreciate it and appreciate all of the work that you do. We hope that you can join us on our podcast on deeplyrooted.blog or on Apple Podcasts. Looking forward to seeing you there.