25/08/2026
Learning Across African Food Systems: AfriFOODlinks MSME Exchange | Mbale, Uganda 🇺🇬🌍
Tunza Dada FreshField Enterprise is participating in the AfriFOODlinks MSME Exchange in Mbale, Uganda, an opportunity to learn, share experiences and explore how African MSMEs can contribute to more sustainable, inclusive and resilient food systems.
Day One began with connection and exchange. We worked in diverse groups with entrepreneurs and MSME representatives from Burkina Faso, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda and Kenya, learning about the different enterprises represented in the room, the communities they serve and the realities of building businesses in different contexts.
What became clear was how much our experiences intersect.
Across countries, we heard conversations around creating decent employment for young people and women, strengthening financial independence, building sustainable enterprises, managing people and relationships, accessing markets, and ensuring that economic growth translates into meaningful social impact.
The diversity of the room made the conversations richer. Different countries brought different experiences, but the ambition was remarkably similar: build enterprises that create value while improving people's lives.
Day Two took the exchange from the classroom into the field.
We visited AvoGlow, a Ugandan enterprise working with avocado value addition. The visit gave us an opportunity to see how locally available agricultural produce can be transformed into higher-value products, including avocado-based oils and other products. It was a practical reminder that the value of agriculture does not end at harvesting — there are opportunities throughout the value chain when innovation, quality and market access come together.
We also visited Byeffe FOODS Company Limited a woman-owned food-processing enterprise in Mbale that transforms pumpkin and other cereals and grains into nutritious products, including pumpkin flour, porridge blends, pumpkin seed snacks and other value-added products. The enterprise grew from a desire to address the low value and limited markets farmers faced with pumpkins, demonstrating how processing can create new markets and strengthen farmer livelihoods.
For us at Tunza Dada FreshField Enterprise, these visits brought many of the ideas we work around to life: climate-smart agriculture, value addition, nutrition, women's economic empowerment, entrepreneurship and sustainable livelihoods.
The most important lesson so far is that building a successful food enterprise is not only about the product. It is about the entire ecosystem the farmer, the processor, the worker, the market, the consumer, the environment and the community.
We are grateful for the opportunity to learn from enterprises across Africa and to reflect on how these lessons can inform and strengthen our own work in Kisumu.
We came to exchange ideas. We are leaving with possibilities. 🌱
in East Africa Christine Oluoch
