Nyota Limited, a social enterprise, has partnered with rural small scale farmers in the country to manufacture frozen vegetables, frozen precooked legumes and canned specialty sauces that they sell through leading supermarkets in Kenya.

The business enterprise is committed to increasing smallholder farmer incomes, reducing post-harvest food losses and improving nutrition of Kenyan consumers.

According to Nyota’s founder and CEO Florence Mogere, the initiative was started to help deal with her struggles of getting nutritious and hygienic precooked food for her young family while juggling a busy career in Finance.

Nyota trades under the brand names Frozen Isle and Ntamu, and has provided urban consumers with an all year round supply of local, nutritious and clean fresh frozen and canned sauces vegetables at an affordable cost.

Frozen Isle manufactures precooked and frozen African Leafy Vegetables (Managu, Terere, Kunde, Sagaa and Spinach), legumes (variety of beans, Githeri and Baby White Maize) while Ntamu handles specialty cooking sauces like Pasta, Pizza and Tomato Puree.

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“Nyota is a social enterprise that partners with smallholder farmers in rural Kenya to process frozen vegetables, frozen precooked legumes and specialty sauces trading under the brand names Frozen Isle and Ntamu,” said the Nyota CEO.

She added that after taking fresh vegetables from farmers, they sell the same to leading supermarkets in Kenya such as Carrefour, Naivas, and Chandarana FoodPlus.

“Our smallholder farmers are out growers of fresh vegetables that feed into our production lines,” she said.

“We are engaged in agribusiness value addition and are focused on strengthening agricultural supply chains by eliminating perennial shortages in fresh produce.”

“We therefore source, process, package and preserve high quality locally available vegetables without adding preservatives hence giving our consumers nutritious and healthy local vegetables,” she added.

However, she noted that her main challenge has been sourcing for fresh vegetables and legumes throughout the year.

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“Agriculture in Kenya is mainly rain fed so this means most smallholder farmers produce at the same time and then for the rest of the dry months there is little to no produce.

“We are however supporting our farmers with training and eventually with capital with the aim of transitioning them to all year producers,” explained the Nyota CEO.

In addition, the Nyota CEO pointed out that fresh produce and frozen food is more demanding due to the need for specialized transport and high electricity costs.

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Mogere further noted that she plans to expand the market reach to cover all major towns in Kenya and eventually into the rest of the African continent and overseas markets.

Nyota is now targeting to work with over 10,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya in the next 3 years.