Determined to alleviate the suffering of women and give back to society, Oya Food Nigeria, a growing agribusiness that offers nutritional values to Nigerians, is empowering hundreds of local female rice farmers across the country.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Chidiadi Madumere, said the initiative became imperative to create value in the supply chain while reducing dependence on imported raw material.

“We are focusing on a strategy of backward integration to maintain growth and sustained profitability,” she said.

While local female farmers produce the raw materials, Madumere stressed that Oya Food ensures that good quality products are developed through the full supply chain from farm to fork. For the agro firm, it described the nation’s reliance on imported raw materials as risky, expensive and unsustainable.

She further enumerated some negative impacts of importing foods, including volatile commodity prices arising from unpredictable changes in global supply and demand, exchange rate fluctuations and punitive tariffs and import barriers.

Also, as part of its CSR projects, Oya Food has an ongoing commitment to support local communities connected with its operations and activities across the country tagged ‘Oya Food Beaver Jollof Rice Outreach,’ which distributed food packs to Destitute people in Ajah area of Lagos State.

While commenting on the initiative, Madumere said: “This is because we strongly believe that food is essential to human existence.

“We are determined to create conditions that will allow people to thrive, systems that seek to alleviate hunger and combat aspects of multi-dimensional poverty by delivering food and disaster relief items.

“Today, Oya Food forges ahead with its quest to champion food banking system in school feeding, community nutrition-based interventions, urban farming, job placement for beneficiaries, resilience and self sustenance daily mobile pantry services, walk-in-beneficiaries.”

Beneficiaries of its benevolence include children age zero to 16, pregnant women, lactating mothers, patients of diet-related diseases, seniors citizens ages 50 years and above and indigent families.