“We very much felt that there was a generational shift happening in Africa. There were opportunities on the continent and we were faced with a choice. ‘Are we going to be part of creating these opportunities, or are we going to be the people who come to work for the people who’ve created the opportunities?’”
In founding Amayi Foods, Kudzayi Hove and her partners Nana Appiah-Korang and Onome Allu are making opportunities for themselves and for others. Founded in 2015, the company makes West African condiments and food mixes using 100% natural ingredients and empowering local farmers both directly and indirectly through more than 20 community projects.
Building a food business is hard anywhere, but it is especially hard in Nigeria. According to Trading Economics, as of October 2024, Nigeria’s food inflation rate reached 39.16% year-on-year, up from 37.77% in September. Despite these challenges, Amayi foods is growing faster than the average FMCG company and will be profitable this year. It’s also working to grow through acquisition which when complete would make it the largest FMCG company in Nigeria owned by women.
Skills and smarts are clearly a part of Amayi’s success. Hove and Appiah-Korang met working in private equity at Emerging Capital Partners. Passion is also a part of it. Allu shared that “making food is how I express love.” Even after a long day working developing new recipes, she enjoys coming home to cook. But the secret sauce, pun intended, that takes it over the top are the relationships that these women have built.
If you spend any time with these women, it becomes apparent that they all share a deep respect for each other. At different times, each of them stopped the interview to make sure that a salient contribution of another was recognized. “She doesn’t talk about this often but Kudzayi left a very good paying job to do this. There were a lot of sacrifices that were made,” said Appiah-Korang. “Onome is our star [product] development partner. She came up with Rodo Peppe,” added Hove.
Of course there will be rough patches, personally and professionally, over nearly 10 years of building a business. There will be disagreements over bigger things than which product is the best. (They all love the Rodo Peppe but for Allu it’s the Toma-to mix because it brings in the most revenue. For Hove it’s the Toma Peppe that helps the Zimbabwean cook the traditional Nigerian Jollof of her adopted home. For Appiah-Korang, it’s Poi Poi, the company’s first product developed from her mother’s recipe). The team’s shared vision of what they are building gets themthrough moments of conflict. In addition to building a thriving business, Appiah-Korang shared, “One of the things that we wanted to demonstrate was that three African women can work together. And work together quite successfully.”
Relationships have also helped the team contextualize their progress and helped to grow the business. The media and investors love to celebrate overnight success, but these operators know that success in this environment takes decades. A conversation with a former classmate helped Hove come to terms with that reality. “You’re not doing anything wrong. This thing takes a long time. It takes everybody a long time, right?”, she recalled. “You work like crazy and all the sudden people start to notice,” she added.
A conversation with another friend helped the team see the path towards faster growth. “I was telling him how I had gone to visit a company about contract manufacturing for us and the first thing the guy asked was, “Do you want to buy my company?” recalled Hove. When she shared that she found that question ridiculous, her friend asked her why she found it ridiculous. “It was a jolt! Hang on a minute, what exactly are we trying to achieve here?” she remembers thinking. With a background in private equity, the team had both the skills and networks needed to pull together an acquisition deal and today they are working to finalize just that. Surrounding themselves with the right people reminded the team of the big vision they had for the company and all they were capable of achieving.
In the short term, the company is working to finalize their acquisition while continuing to build the opportunities for themselves and others that they always dreamed of. Their focus for the next few years is to build a sustainable supply chain that creates real prosperity for farmers. Hove shared, “We will engage them in a way that fosters real prosperity, enabling them to share in the upside, increase their earnings, and build ownership of assets. This approach empowers people to create and pass on generational wealth—because ultimately, that’s how true prosperity is built.”