Empowering the Unsung Heroes of the African Food System
Learn about the people who work behind the scenes to get food from farm to table and why their success is crucial for reducing food loss and waste across Africa.
From Marketing Degree to Market Stalls at Dawn
After earning my degree in international marketing, I never imagined it would lead me to the local informal wet markets, such as Marikiti and Githurai, in Nairobi, Kenya. There, I would stand in the chilly mornings with traders already deep into their workday to understand how these markets function. For years after, I walked through these bustling agricultural markets in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and even India. I sat on crates sharing meals with traders, rode in the back of packed trucks carrying mangoes up winding mountain roads, and discovered a complex world that keeps millions of families fed.
What I have found out has been equally humbling and fascinating. Critical to Africa’s food systems are businesspeople whom I refer to as “barons”. These are the traders who have made substantial investments to transport food from farms to cities before dawn.
These barons control over 80% of the flow of fruits and vegetables, which they source directly from farmers. They usually pay in cash and then undertake the perilous journey across unreliable public infrastructure to get the agricultural produce to the markets; extending credit to tier 2 traders, who then supply tier 3—the “mama mbogas”. Payment is then moved back upstream slowly: sometimes the same day, sometimes weeks later, or in formal retail, months later.
They supply food to exporters, processors, retail stores, and local markets. These barons manage networks of scouts who track which farms have crops ready for harvesting, road conditions to the farms, aggregation, and the prices the farmers have set. From the outside, their operations seem chaotic. But on closer examination, behind the façade of disorder lies a sophisticated system that quietly feeds entire countries.
The Challenge: A System Under Strain
Despite their expertise, thousands of these traders work alone without coordination. This creates serious problems throughout the entire food system. In Kenya, farmers face numerous challenges. They depend heavily on traders to purchase their crops, often with no contingency plan in place if the traders fail to buy from them. During seasons of gluts, farmers frequently receive very low returns for their produce in the market. Many farmers struggle with pests and diseases, unpredictable weather patterns, and limited access to affordable credit for purchasing inputs.
The supply chain suffers, too. Food waste happens when overproduction meets poor timing. Payments get delayed for weeks or even months, creating cash flow problems. Trucks stay parked, idling in crowded markets, racking up daily costs while farm produce spoils in the heat. Every day a truck waits in line means a trader cannot return to farms for new consignments, leaving farmers with rotting produce and no market access. These economic losses affect everyone in the supply chain, from the smallest farmer to the biggest trader.
The Unsung Heroes
While these barons oversee the large-scale flow of agricultural produce to the markets, the last mile before the customer buys it depends on three essential groups working in a fragile chain.
First are the farmers, who, despite the many challenges they face, continue to farm the land to grow food. Next are the transporters, who, once the food is harvested, move it to where it is needed. They often face challenges such as the ever-increasing cost of fuel and taxes, among others. Then the food gets to “mama mbogas”. These are women vendors in Kenya who sell fresh fruits and vegetables, and serve as a vital link in the food supply chain between farmers and consumers. They start their work early in the day, sourcing fresh produce, and continue until late in the evening to ensure families can purchase fresh produce.
Why it Matters
Every meal we eat passes through the hands of many people. Yet the system they maintain faces enormous strain. Food loss means:
- Fewer nutritious options for households
- Reduced income for farmers
- Higher food costs for everyone
- Wasted resources and environmental impact
The Path Forward
How do we build a stronger, fairer, and more sustainable food system? By recognizing the heroes who keep us fed and giving them better tools to succeed, we can build a food system that works for everyone, from the farmer planting seeds to the family putting dinner on the table. The people working within this system are essential partners. If they stopped working even for a day, entire countries would face food shortages.
How then do we build a better and more sustainable food system for fruits and vegetables? The answer lies in empowering these systems over time. This is where NutriSave comes in. Funded by the Gates Foundation and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, NutriSave is working to reduce food loss and waste and increase access to nutritious food in Kenya. But how would it work practically?
For the barons and farmers, NutriSave, in collaboration with Tigoni Grown and Taimba Limited, is piloting a digital marketplace that directly addresses the information gaps. This platform will enable traders to view real-time supply and demand, thereby reducing the guesswork that leads to trucks sitting idle and food going to waste. For farmers, it will mean better price visibility and a direct line to multiple buyers, breaking their dependence on a single trader.
For the “mama mbogas,” NutriSave is partnering with Six Square Limited to test a washing, peeling, and cutting intervention. This model takes surplus and imperfect produce that would otherwise be wasted, processes it into ready-to-cook formats, and supplies informal food vendors in Nairobi’s low-income communities. By connecting traders directly to small-scale informal food vendors, the surplus produce finds a market, increasing nutrition for low-income consumers and adding a valuable revenue stream for traders.
Building a Stronger Future Together
To create a food system that benefits everyone, we need to build on:
- Recognizing the Real Heroes: Support traders, “mama mbogas”, and transporters as valuable partners rather than middlemen to eliminate.
- Improving Coordination: Develop better platforms for logistics and market coordination to minimize waste and inefficiency.
- Increasing Transparency: Develop commodity exchanges that forecast supply and demand, ending the current information gaps that lead to gluts and shortages.
- Creating New Pathways: Build systems to redirect surplus produce to where it’s needed.
NutriSave has already begun transforming Kenya’s food system by piloting a digital marketplace and testing innovative ways to reduce food loss. The goal is straightforward yet powerful: to reduce food loss and enhance nutrition for low-income consumers. If successful, the lessons learned here can be replicated far beyond Kenya, offering scalable market-driven models for other African countries. And so, as I walk through the fresh produce markets, calling out greetings to familiar faces, I feel privileged to be part of work that uplifts these unsung heroes, saves food, and protects our planet.
