The world’s premier forum for African agriculture – The Africa Food Systems Forum (AGRF) – are delighted to announce the selection of Affiong Williams (Founder & CEO, ReelFruit) as the 2024 winner of the Women Agripreneur of the Year Award(WAYA), at the Africa Food Systems Forum (September 02-06, Kigali-Rwanda)
ReelFruit – a fruit processing and distributing company – transform Nigeria’s abundant and delicious tropical fruits into healthy, tasty, dried snacks. Williams has notably created over 300 full-time jobs since the inception of ReelFruit and displays remarkable confidence in her ability to boost that figure all the way to 10,000.
She says:
As women in agribusiness, we’ve proven we can build thriving ventures. To unlock further growth, we must deeply understand our market. This enables us to conceptualise products that resonate, attract investment, and propel our businesses forward. Securing funding for ReelFruit taught me a crucial lesson: Women in agribusiness must be market experts. This knowledge empowers us to create irresistible products, attract investors, and scale our impact. To secure the investment your agribusiness needs, it’s essential to thoroughly understand your market. This empowers you to develop tailored products that stand out and attract the capital that fuels your vision.
In reaction to her win, Williams went on to express hope that she could become a role model and pioneer who is able to tread a clear path to be toed by women (or anyone for that matter) in their quest to build big agribusiness that would put both country (Nigeria) and continent on the world map.
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