The intersection of wellness and agriculture is a critical area that has gained attention recently, highlighting how our food systems directly impact our health. With over half of the world’s acutely food-insecure individuals residing in Africa, the need for sustainable agricultural practices is more urgent than ever. Research also shows poor agricultural practices can lead to malnutrition and related diseases. There is a movement to provide not just food security but healthy food options that would lead to an improved quality of life and life expectancy for all.
This is where our #MCNWorkLife subject, Cobi-Jane Akinrele, comes in. Also known as Cobi, she is the founder and CEO of Ake Collective, a company in Jos, Plateau State, that cultivates and processes superfoods such as Fonio and Moringa for people with wellness-conscious needs. She shares her journey on the nuances of leaving her life behind in the UK to start an agribusiness in Nigeria, the inspiration behind having women farmers as key drivers of Ake Collective, and more!
Who would people say you are?
If you ask my closest friends, they will tell you that Cobi is a dreamer dedicated to doing what she sets her mind to. They would also say that I am kind.
My friends, who are not as close, would say I am more of a no-nonsense person. I am sweet, but I am ready to be strict and firm when needed, especially when running a business in Nigeria, which has been hard for me due to its harsh environment. I also tend to use a lot of soft power in my work, as I work primarily with women. If I go into conversations all guns blazing, it could bring a lot of rumours about me being rude and discourage other women from working with me.
In a nutshell, I would say that Cobi is a balancing act, a dreamer who hopes to inspire other people to thrive through her work.
Tell me more about your childhood dream job and how it translated to your current role
So, I was born and bred in the United Kingdom. When I was a baby, my mum wanted me to be a model. I was a diva then and loved taking photos and doing catwalks while my dad watched football. Later on in life, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon due to my struggles with a neurological disorder that causes chronic back and nerve pain, and I knew what it was like to navigate these challenges in a Nigerian-British household. I was advised to work either at a hospice or at a special school for children. And I chose the latter.
From ages 16 to 18, I volunteered at a school in Britain once every week where children had learning difficulties, and it was wonderful watching the children grow in confidence. However, I found that you make little difference, especially when it comes to holistic care of how the child is being taken care of at home; the government takes care of that, not the doctor. It was then that I realised that medicine wasn’t for me, and then I decided that perhaps my dream job was to become a politician to shape and influence these policies.
However, I quickly became disillusioned and realised that unless I had “endless pockets,” there wasn’t much I could do there. It was also disingenuous for me to want to run things in Nigeria without doing anything for Nigerians. The urge to support people shaped my decision to return to Nigeria. Right now, however, I have realised that I make more of an impact as a business owner than a local government chairman, for instance.
Quite interesting. How did these dreams inspire Aké Collective?
I studied politics at Cambridge University, and throughout my time there, I experienced Nigeria through TV. I fell in love with my country and decided that I wanted to do my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Nigeria in 2017, coupled with the fact that my best friend and grandpa lived in Lagos, too. NYSC in itself wasn’t all that great, but living in Lagos had its appeal. However, as the programme started to end, I needed to find a reason to stay in Nigeria. My aunt was a cassava farmer, and my dad had been processing cassava for ten years at the time, so I decided to go into agriculture. My initial idea then was to bring older and more experienced farmers together to meet younger farmers and have some sort of knowledge exchange, as opposed to revolutionising agriculture with technology, as our farming is still done on a small scale. Most people can’t even afford this.
The initiative was called AKE (Agriculture Knowledge Exchange). I believe it was dead on arrival in 2018 because the small-scale farmers were not interested in any of the new ideas we brought. The young entrepreneurs were so interested in raising rounds through venture capital that it didn’t even matter whether the proposed solution was feasible. A few months before my passing out parade, we did a pilot test, sending drones out into farms to make the farmers understand how weather patterns influence climate change and agriculture. The challenge was that they simply didn’t care for the pilot. My assistant at the time later confided in me that they wanted to be “empowered,” and that empowerment means cash. That’s when I realised that all the romantic ideas in my head about bringing people together to gain knowledge would not work because, essentially, people wanted to get paid.
Next, I looked at potential crops I could use as value chains or means of profit. I thought of black pepper, cocoa, and cashew, but none caught my attention because there was no potential to do anything exciting or new. Then, one day, I went to Mile 12, and a gentleman told me that they had started exporting this grain called Acha or Fonio. I did some research and saw that it indeed was true, as people back then associated Fonio as the next superfood of the economy, and it just so happens to be grown in the North-Central region of the country.
I started stalking a couple of Fonio retailers that claimed to sell the grain on Facebook and LinkedIn. I also sent them messages, but they didn’t respond, as they may have thought I was a scam. However, someone finally trusted me enough to refer me to his connections in Jos, and I booked my plane ticket and went off to Jos to meet people I didn’t know. I do not recommend this when starting a business, but that’s what happened.
There, I went to some small-scale processing units and met my first community of six Fonio farmers. I returned to Lagos, contacted buyers in the US and Italy, and asked them how many metric tonnes they needed. Someone in the US finally requested a sample, which I shared. His feedback for me was that there was a “crunchy, nutty taste” in the Fonio whenever he ate it, and I was surprised. I contacted the farmers to enquire about the source of the crunchy taste, and they told me there was sand in the Fonio, which “he didn’t know how to wash.” At the end of the day, I didn’t win the contract, and I guess that was due to a lack of proper research because if I had done the research, I would have known that sand was difficult to process and remove with Fonio, which had even limited its consumption within Nigeria and globally.
I went back to Cambridge to do my Masters in 2019/2020, which was also the year of COVID-19, and we were all trapped indoors. A couple of people were willing to buy Fonio from me within Nigeria, so we had about six ladies in villages in Bauchi who processed 300-400 kg of Fonio at a time. I managed the business via WhatsApp through an executive assistant who later became the operations manager, and three field officers handled the processing operations with 60 farmers, all via WhatsApp. I was raking in profits due to the lockdown, but we had issues with sand whenever we had orders higher than 500 kg, and because I wasn’t there, I was losing money. There was also the issue of field officers tripling the prices, and it didn’t matter the amount of checks and balances; it just wasn’t working at the time. With all this happening, I then decided to move to Jos.
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After my relocation, I’d say things happened quite quickly, from moving to raising money and building the processing unit within 12 months. We also did this massive NGO project that helped us to gain about 1,000 women farmers in our network. Our team grew quickly, and that’s when we started selling wholesale Fonio as a wellness product to people who already knew the benefits. However, there was so much focus on forex then that we didn’t understand why Fonio wasn’t even a bestseller in our localities. Hence, from 2022-2023, I took a break because wholesale transactions were slow, and we needed to show results to our investors. We used that time to do research and found out that Fonio in Jos was traditionally recommended to patients with diabetes and is treated as a health food for those with blood sugar concerns and who need high fibre. This led to our transition last year from an agribusiness focused on more opportunities for farmers through Fonio sales into a health and wellness business focused on sharing the joys of indigenous foods with wonderful health benefits. Even if we are pursuing a global market, we also ensure that people have access to these foods, and are aware of them. Last year and even this year, we started engaging in more health and wellness events and becoming more proactive on social media. In January, we started selling in bulk to health food stores in South Africa, and we are focused on being a company based in Nigeria that is focused on celebrating foods that are good for people, the planet, and the farmers that grow them.
You work primarily with women farmers in the North. What inspired this decision, and how did this impact the communities you work with?
It was by design. In some communities we work with, even if women are responsible for the land, they don’t own it, and it will always remain with their husbands. These are women who sacrifice for their families. Also, because Fonio is a non-cash crop that women traditionally cultivate, there are situations where the husbands give their wives land to grow Fonio for their consumption. We believe that working with these women enables them to gain income in many ways without challenging societal or traditional norms. That’s why we chose Fonio as a grain to explore, and without making it loud, this is a creative way to implement women’s empowerment. Husbands are free to join the collective, but the person who gets paid is whoever does the work; most of the time, it is the women. We have provided mobile phones and financial literacy and offer extra support for women through business.
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Can you explain the partnerships you have built with these women farmers?
We have a tight community of farmers with key products we want to sell. The women are then engaged through onboarding events and workshops, opening up opportunities for more women farmers to join. We have stronger relationships if you supply us regularly, especially as we pay above the market rate. At Ake, we want to be as embedded in these communities as possible and ensure our relationships are mutually beneficial. I am not the biggest fan of photo ops, but I am more concerned about us doing the work. However, we tend to hire field officers from the communities we work with, and we can do training sessions where possible. Financial workshops are compulsory for those who work with us, especially as the communities we work with are very rural and are not as open to having a traditional bank account as those in urban areas. It is also not safe security-wise for our team to be walking around with bags of cash, so bank transfers are safer instead. There is also the issue of language barriers with physical cash deposits.
We have also conducted workshops on best practices for food processing, grain storage, and crop planting using our tutorial farm for small-scale farmers. We give these farmers a plot of land to try out various crops, which helps increase their yield and puts more money in their pockets.
What would you say are the challenges of running your business?
It’s expensive, as I have to pay salaries. There is also the issue of trust with the rural folk, as I am young and have a small frame, a British accent, and a high-pitched voice. Telling people not to pour chemicals on their land or open a bank account is always met with hesitation because of these elements. Running and leading a team in an environment where it is not the norm to see a young lady leading large groups of people can also be challenging. People management and the lack of funds are key issues. People always have opinions and criticisms to make, but I would always say that one can try it out first, and then they would be able to see if running this business can be done. There is also the issue of violence and conflict within these communities, but I still have to go there and visit and talk to them. The locals always ask me if I will leave or return, and I always promise to return.
What are the main foods that Ake Collective is sourcing?
Fonio (locally known as Acha) is our flagship product. We also have a range of Moringa teas to support our vision of health and wellness. At Ake, we also source local food ingredients. We have done wholesale wild honey from the forest and regular honey, and we also started with regular baobab and aim to sell more wholesale next year. The biggest change for us, however, is our processing facilities. Many people do not realise that if they are not processing themselves, the chances of having sand, bacteria, and other negative elements are high. The fact that we process ourselves is what makes us stand out. We are currently fundraising to digitise our process so that there is more transparency for the mass public.
What would you say are your challenges and achievements as a female entrepreneur?
I think that as a female entrepreneur, you have to learn how to swallow disrespect. Sometimes, I go to the bank, and someone will tell me I have “someone like you at home.” There is also the issue of men trying to sleep with you. This is a conversation that needs to be brought into the public eye regarding men trying to offer sex in exchange for seed money or advice to young female founders. If you are not careful, you might feel peer pressured into doing things you don’t want to do. I also used to feel like I was doing things wrong when another founder made more buzz with their business after maybe only two years of existence. But now I have come to realise that either the person is really just a better businessperson than you, or the person has other sources of income.
But yes, I believe these are discussions we should have more in the public eye because all my friends who are entrepreneurs have also faced this experience, but we can’t speak up for fear that we could end up ostracised. As a female entrepreneur, you must also have thick skin, as people can be unnecessarily harsh or unkind in bizarre ways, which I have not seen with my male counterparts. You always have to be extremely confident in your decision-making. There is also the problem of women being judged more by their relationships than by their achievements, and it is dangerous to do so because you will then start putting a halt on certain dreams and ambitions.
For my wins, I inspire many women to think that being a female entrepreneur is possible. Most women I work with are in their late 20s and 30s and have many children. They wonder if I am worried or scared because of the responsibilities, but I am always baffled because I believe that if I can do it, you can, too. People just need the opportunity and support, and that wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t a lady myself. This is why I believe it is really important to pursue one’s dreams, no matter what the dream may be.
How do you navigate building trust in conflict-ridden environments in the North?
There are a lot of preconceived notions that need to be dispelled. People are not busy riding cows with AK-47s. There are areas where violence could be sparked very quickly, but it doesn’t happen all the time. I navigate the space by being honest and building relationships. It’s a trust economy. If they don’t trust you, no one will talk to you. If you say you will do something, you have to do it so that when things get hairy or turbulent, they wouldn’t want you to be harmed either. When a crisis is about to happen, there are indicators like rising tensions between community groups, and they will tell you. In some instances, it has been random, but it’s not the case where you are not informed. Forming relationships with many stakeholders—youth leaders, village heads, and local security—is also helpful. They are the best people to stay informed regarding local community events. My biggest navigation tip, however, is transparency. Do what you promised to do, but do it with caution. Don’t carelessly have phone conversations about money, for instance, in public. It’s basic safety precautions so as not to put yourself out there as a target. If you also know that you will not be there long term, don’t start. It leaves a bitter taste and makes them hostile to new people.
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What advice would you give first-time women entrepreneurs in your field and Nigeria?
In general, I would say don’t waste your time listening to advice from people who have not been entrepreneurs before. I wouldn’t have done anything if I had listened to certain people. My second tip is that you should not wait for everyone to support you before you start that business, even if it is family.
When it comes to an agribusiness or wellness business, I would say that you should do more community building and understand the products before building out your processing factory. You have to focus on selling as opposed to hiring or having a cute team. To be sustainable, you must make money, meaning you must sell. Also, don’t focus so much on other people’s businesses, as this can be a huge distraction. You need to focus on whether you are really making money or not. The beginning will be tough, but as you get better at it, you can deal better with challenges as they come. It is life, and it is the nature of business. It can’t be all photoshoots and launch parties all the time. Disappointments and losses will come, but you will get by.
What are your plans for Ake Collective?
We want to make more wellness-based products that are easy to cultivate and cook. I also want Ake to expand to more countries. Ake Collective started with South Africa, and by the end of this year, we would be launching retail products directly for individuals within South Africa. We also want to launch into more territories in other parts of the world for retail or smaller units of the crops we grow here. I would also want to experiment more with Fonio and Moringa and see how we can meet more wellness needs with other products, too.
Regarding the agribusiness space, I just want to see more people experiment with different crops. I would like to see locally grown textiles and food crops, as well as more exploratory work, such as companies in the US making beer out of Fonio or Americans producing milk out of Okpa. I want us to have more products out of these crops and more creativity.
What would you say are your hobbies?
I read a lot of African fiction. I am also a queen of solo dates. For instance, I can take myself out to SLOW restaurant with a glass of wine and romanticise my life, and I will see it as fun.
What are two work-life tips that you swear by?
Switch that phone off, sis, or put it on Do Not Disturb mode so that you will have a good night’s rest. Another tip is to block out time for focus work to avoid distractions, which for me means not answering unscheduled phone calls during the week. The people on the other end of the line will be fine.
