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Improving the quality of food in Nigeria
Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli (MBA 1999) is helping her country rethink the way it feeds itself. The cofounder and director of AACE Food Processing & Distribution, an agroprocessing company in Nigeria, is empowering farmers and improving the quality of food produced in the African nation.
“Changing mindsets among the local populace—that ‘Made in Nigeria’ products, especially food, are high quality and suitable for consumption—has proved difficult,” says Nwuneli. In addition, fragmented value chains, which are inefficient, unreliable, and often uncompetitive relative to cheaper imports, have resulted in a processing landscape that imports approximately 90 percent of ingredients used in food production.
To address the problem of malnutrition and the lack of healthy foods in Nigeria, Nwuneli and her husband, Mezuo Nwuneli (MBA 2003), launched AACE in 2009 through their investment company, Sahel Capital. The goal is to source, process, and distribute fruits, vegetables, herbs, and grains within West Africa, thereby improving nutrition levels, aiding farmers, and creating jobs.
Social entrepreneurship comes easily to Nwuneli, founder of LEAP Africa, a leadership training, research, and coaching organization, and NIA, a nonprofit that aims to help female Nigerian university students achieve their highest potential.
(Published April 2014)
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