With Nuli, Ada Osakwe is reshaping our approach to food, putting wellness first and rewriting the narrative around Africa’s powerful, nutrient-rich ingredients.
The decision to open Nuli’s newest restaurant in Washington, D.C., Ada Osakwe explains, was born from the same conviction that fuelled the company’s earliest beginnings. A desire to expand the global understanding of Africa’s agricultural brilliance. After nearly a decade of championing Nigerian-grown superfoods and redefining what farm-to-table could mean on the continent, Osakwe felt it was time to bring that narrative to Americans. To an international audience poised to appreciate the depth of Nuli.
Washington, with its diverse diaspora, diplomatic energy, and increasingly sophisticated food scene, emerged as the natural next chapter. It is a city where conversations about sustainability, culture, and global food systems converge, and Osakwe saw an opportunity to insert Nigeria’s voice into these conversations.
In this exclusive interview, Ada Osakwe shares her journey to bringing Nuli to life, the inspirations behind it, and how she successfully expanded the brand to six stores. Nuli’s presence in Washington allows her to showcase the nutrient-rich indigenous crops she has long championed — moringa, hibiscus, fonio, cassava — in a space where their origins and significance will be appreciated. For Osakwe, opening the store was both a strategic and deeply personal step: a way to amplify the work of the farmers she partners with, challenge old perceptions about African cuisine, and demonstrate that wellness and innovation can be rooted in tradition.
What inspired you to start Nuli, and how has your vision for the company evolved since its inception?
Nuli has been a labour of love for the last nine years or so. It was deeply inspired by the time I worked in the agricultural food sector with the Nigerian government. I was a Senior Advisor to the Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, from 2012 to 2015. There, I was just inspired to change the narrative around what it meant for an African to be a leader in food production. I was seeing how we were importing over 4 billion dollars worth of staple foods, things that the everyday Nigerian would eat. Yet we could produce these things locally because we had the land, we had the people, and we had the water.
I couldn’t understand how food insecure we were as a country, and the fact that we weren’t consuming as much locally produced foods. For this reason, I told myself that I would leave the full-time job and really think about solving this issue. My solution to the problem was to start my farm-to-table restaurant brand, Nuli.
Tell me a little bit about the superfoods you use, like moringa, hibiscus, and cassava, as ingredients in your meals. Why is this important to Nuli?
I started focusing inwards into what we grew locally and naturally in Nigeria and across Africa. It was essential to bring that to light. Nuli was inspired by the fact that I was also on a wellness journey, and for me, fundamental to that was nutrition and having fresh farm-to-table produce that was grown locally was paramount for that good nutrition.
Africa is rich in indigenous crops that are packed with nutrients. In fact, superior to many things that people grow globally. Things like fonio, which we call Acha in the north. It’s a staple crop common in the north. They call it “hungry man’s food” because it literally grows so easily. It’s also drought-resistant. So whether or not the rains come, whether or not you irrigate it, it’s able to grow ,and you can harvest. A lot of women depend on this crop to feed their children and their families. And then at the same time, it’s very nutrient-dense.
The world went gaga over quinoa as a grain that’s a superfood, which is grown in Latin America. Africa has fonio, which has an even higher nutrient profile, especially when it comes to plant protein. It has all nine amino acids in it, and no other grain has that sort of profile.
Personally, it was important to ensure that we were telling these stories. We were buying from these growers. It was so important to incorporate this into our menu, not just in Nigeria but even when we went global to change the narrative about African food. We do have food that’s not just so delicious but also high in nutrient value, like fonio, things like moringa, hibiscus flower, which we turn into zobo, which is great for regulating high blood pressure.
Egusi is also a solid plant protein that is so underrated, but is part of our new menu. We have been using egusi as a salad topper or as a salad dressing. It’s been very exciting to be able to see the impact of Africa’s indigenous produce on the global stage through Nuli.
What inspired the new store location opening in Washington, D.C. and how did you decide to make that decision?
From day one, I knew that I wanted to build a long-lasting brand. In fact, when we started in a small location in Abuja, selling juices and wraps. However, I had a bigger vision. My plan was to open up locations and extend this to food so that Nigerians had access to better food. Our mission really was to inspire healthier lifestyles through good nutrition, and we do that through our farm-to-table fresh produce.
I always knew, even after the Abuja store, within the first year, that things had to change. When I knew that was when we started seeing global brands coming into Nigeria. I think it was the same time KFC was expanding in Nigeria as a restaurant brand. People were spending so much money to buy fast food, and yet we had our own homegrown indigenous restaurant brands that we were trying to scale up. It became my mission to create a global brand that provided nutrition to many communities.
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What are your favourite meals at Nuli?
My favourite meals at Nuli change quite frequently. I designed and created everything on that menu, literally starting with a salad and some Indian leftovers in my fridge. That’s what created the famous naan wraps that use naan bread and tandoori chicken with a salad inside. That was also my favourite at some point.
In terms of the juice, I still love our Nuli Zobo, a hibiscus drink which is actually absolutely divine. It’s all natural products. No water is added, we use just the juice of a pineapple and ginger and then boil it with the Zobo leaves. So, it’s really pure, and it just hits the spot. For me, my favourite meal right now is the prawn wrap that really melts in the mouth.
As a child, what role did food and restaurant culture play in your upbringing, and how did this influence the creation of Nuli?
This was something that just crept up on me. When I was growing up, it wasn’t really a thing to eat out, so we didn’t have an eating-out culture in Lagos. But eating at home was fun. My mum loved experimenting; she had cookbooks that she used, and I would join her in the kitchen. She played around with pasta, even making it in a jollof style, at a time when that was unusual, since we only had restaurants like Mr. Biggs. This was very homegrown, and I was taught a love for innovating in the kitchen and trying new things and having a curiosity.
That’s what made me try something different and why I have such a focus on doing things differently and outside of the box. Even with Nuli, we were the first to start selling foods like couscous Jollof. I lived in North Africa and Tunisia for five years, and couscous is a big part of the menu. It’s the curiosity and the innovation that really started as a child in my mother’s kitchen that really drove my path into the restaurant space.
What does success look like for you today? And how has your definition of it changed over the years?
Looking back, I realise that my definition of success today has always been consistent with how I’ve viewed it. It’s about doing things that last, that stand the test of time. I just would love to build something that I touched that had a long-lasting impact. That, for me, is my overarching view of success because it encompasses so much.
If you want to create something that endures, you need to consider financial sustainability. In the context of a business, did you get the right people to stay on with the business to make sure it lasts? If it’s in the context of relationships and networks, how did you nurture relationships? How did you impact people’s lives that they remember you, and they want to keep your dreams alive? For me, that’s why success is focusing on ensuring sustainability and building something of significance that lasts.
Can you tell us a bit about how you source the produce for Nuli?
Our agricultural space continues to drive our economy. Food is so essential. We all have to eat each day. We have farmers here in Nigeria who are farming the food that we eat and that we depend on every day. It is a relevant sector, but in many ways, it’s unfortunately such an underdeveloped sector, and I’ve dedicated my life to the transformation of agriculture, not just in Nigeria, but in what inspired me to start Nuli.
Right now, we still import our pineapple concentrate that goes into your Five Alive juice or into your Chivita juice. It’s brought from Europe. Yet we are the largest producer of pineapples in Africa. It ends up going to waste because of a sector and the value chain that has not been supported with the right infrastructure and the right policies.
We source directly from farmers. If we’re not buying directly from a farmer, we’re buying directly from an aggregator, and that’s what we’ve done for the last nearly 10 years.
We have to start looking inwards at our own solutions. With a brand like Nuli, it means we are going to be part of the solutions, and we’re not going to be depending on or waiting for handouts. We will continue to chart our own path for wealth creation in the nation.
Can you share some of the most significant challenges you faced opening your new store and how you overcame them?
At Nuli, we have six stores. At some point, we were at 10 stores before COVID hit, and then we closed a few. We started rebuilding, and now I don’t even have to be around when a new store opens. The processes are in place, the team is in place, and they’re able to get things done. But going into a new country thousands of miles away, and having to deal with everything from looking for a plumber to looking for an electrician or gas — all of those things are a different ballgame.
It’s costly, requires planning for unforeseen circumstances, and is time-consuming. For the new location in DC, our manager was unable to get his Visa. And so suddenly, in addition to everything else I was doing, which was having meetings with accountants, lawyers, folks who were going to deal with regulations and health inspectors. I had to try to just get the business up and running.
Over the summer in DC, I was waking up at 6:00 a.m. every day to teach people how to make Jollof rice and fried rice. Imagine teaching people new recipes, and they are unfamiliar with the taste of the meals. I had to teach them from scratch and then put the standards and the systems in place in terms of consistency in every single item on the menu. I still need a big, long holiday where I just sleep in my bed and don’t even do anything. But I’m glad it all paid off.
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How do you balance your roles while maintaining a sense of authenticity and purpose?
Once you’re grounded in authenticity and you’re grounded in purpose, it sort of drives everything else. You just want to be you, and you want to show up. And that’s sort of how I do my stuff. I want to show up strongly for my little three-year-old girl as a single mum. raising her.
I want to show up strongly for my teams as an entrepreneur — building something different, yet grounded in purpose. It’s important to show up at the six boards that I sit on as a strong strategic partner as we shape the future of these organisations. I want to show up in every aspect of my life as a daughter to my parents, as a sister.
Being authentic and present helps me ensure that balance happens naturally. And it also allows me to understand what I can control and what I can’t control, and to do that, I need support. I need the help of my chief of staff, who manages my calendar and ensures that things are moving smoothly with all my many commitments. Without that, I really wouldn’t be able to balance.
The fact that I have a great nanny who’s able to take care of my daughter when I’m on a call with you like this, and she can play with her and meet her needs. These are things I don’t shy away from. We need those support systems. I always pray to God to send me helpers in everything I do, across all facets of my life. This allows me to keep showing up authentically and grounded, so I can truly achieve what I want in every aspect of my life.
Looking ahead, what are your hopes for the next chapter of your journey with the new store opening?
We have big plans for the future at Nuli to dominate the US markets and then, in turn, keep growing our Nigerian footprint and the rest of Africa. It’s an exciting time. It’s one thing for people to get excited about your brand when it’s coming and you see it in the press everywhere, but it’s another thing when you open and they start coming and then they put you on the hot list, and they say, “These are the 10 brands we love.” And that’s validation right there. And it’s exactly the kind of momentum that I need.
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