Adeola Balogun is a Chartered Accountant and Founder & Chief Operations Officer at Limlim Foods Production Company Ltd; a company in Nigeria which converts locally grown produce into freeze dried fruit snacks and vegetable powder.

With over two decades experience working in various capacities with three leading financial institutions in Nigeria, with Unilever as Treasurer, Cadbury as Head, Supply Chain Finance responsible for four factories across West Africa, she ventured into Agric Food Processing with a mission to reduce post-harvest losses in Nigeria.

A recipient of many awards, she is an  alumnus of the African Women Entrepreneurship Cooperation, AWEC, Founders Institute, Academy of Women Entrepreneurs, AWE, African Women Power Network, AWPN as well as a fellow of Cascador.

With BL, she shares her passion for driving innovation, change and food security in the Agric food processing value chain in Africa, as she partners and works with farms as their off-takers.

 Here, Balogun speaks extensively with Funmi Ajumobi on how government can create an enabling environment for startups by reducing multiple taxation and  building sustainable Agric food processing businesses.

Your work experience has mainly been with production companies. Is that what informed your going into production and becoming an entrepreneur?

Maybe, maybe not. I love corporate finance but my passion was in fashion. My husband preferred me to go into food, thinking I would get tired. He gave it to me as a challenge and I love challenges.

 I then started with bananas because there was nothing on dried bananas then. I started drying and sending to my friends in companies and they would ask me to send more. Three months down the line, we applied for GTCo Food and Drink and we were invited to the fair and the feedback was mind blowing. We had a lot of varieties that the market does not have. We had agbalumo, egg and cabbage powder and we were able to sell all we produced within a short period.

That was what inspired me.

Why did you abandon Accounting for the food sector? Do you miss Accounting in any way?

Accounting can never be abandoned, it’s a lifestyle.  With my product creation, we are always crossing. In terms of pricing, you check the competition and look at the value chain.

It’s an advantage for me.

What has been your experience so far?

There has been ups and downs, but honestly, when I see the output, it gives me joy. Taking products from Nigeria, grown by Nigerian farmers and seeing what we are able to create with them encourages me.

 We have companies importing these same things as ingredients. It wasn’t making sense.  Why will we continue to do that?Let’s show them we can produce them in Nigeria, and that’s what we have been doing.

The freeze-drying started fully in 2019. It is a process that uses vacuum and freezing to dry products. It’s the best in the world. Our products can stand side by side with any international brand and it’s proudly made in Nigeria. Our products are largely grown in Nigeria without fertilisers. They grow naturally. The process of drying maintains the structure and keeps the nutrients intact.

 In the course of drying, it is believed that nutrients in such products are reduced. How do you dry your products and still retain the needed nutrients?

We started with heat-drying but we found out through testing that some of the nutrients are lost in the process and then we started researching and later discovered through our so many trainings outside the country, freeze- drying.

Though a bit expensive because it requires light 24/7 which is a lot here in Nigeria due to our lack of infrastructure, we believe somebody has to start something and show Nigerians that there is hope.

Preservatives have been a major concern in food consumption as they are believed to cause health challenges. Do you have other alternatives?

We are proud to say that we do not add any preservatives whatsoever to our products. Our method of drying takes away 99% of the moisture and it’s as dry as anything. As long as we keep our product in cool pouches and a cool and dry place like other powders, it can stay for years. We have customers in and out of the country.

Dried products are supposed to be in a metalised pouch because once light penetrates, it starts reducing the quality. We take that into consideration too.

How can the value chain be further exploited to benefit women?

We partner with lots of women. We run a platform where women processors can get an order and do not have what to use to process it. There is no need for everybody to go and buy machines. If your experience is in marketing, focus on it, we have invested in machines for production, we produce for you so you can sell to your customers.

We also buy almost all our products from female farmers.

Your products are locally sourced. Why are locally sourced products more expensive than the imported ones?

One, we don’t have infrastructure.  As a business owner, I’m the one providing my power, my water and I have to get my facilities.  As we talk, petroleum prices have gone up and we have taken our pricing with diesel. Comparing us with other countries where infrastructure and basic needs are provided, we can’t compete.

Second, a lot of the products being imported cannot stand quality-wise beside what we are producing locally. If you do a laboratory analysis of what is being imported and what we produce here in Nigeria, we will be surprised that the difference is huge.

Yes,in the past,  there was a food company set up and they were not meeting up with standard, but there is always a way round it. We can start gradually and build the backward integration for it to meet demand. There is no reason why we, with our farmlands, should be importing these things when at the same time our farmers are losing over $2.2 billion annually due to lack of processing.

It doesn’t add up.

Over the years, the level of insecurity in the farms has made it tougher for people to keep expanding in the Agric sub-sector. Some products that should be available right now are quite expensive because farmers have not gone back to the farm to replant.

Some have had bad experiences that they don’t have confidence going back to the farm. So many people in diaspora that invested in Agriculture, are not encouraged given their experiences. Last year flooding, too, affected a lot of farmers and now, we have lost N31 billion to tomato Ebola.

We need the government to create an enabling environment for us. Let them reduce the double taxation.

A startup who has been able to grow his business to N25 million and wants to make it to N60 million, government starts slamming taxes on them.

There are also too many regulators who are killing our business. We are not being given numbers and yet imported products that are not as good as what we produce are given priority. It is frustrating. These regulators come to you to ask for the same documentation and reporting to different directorates.  Government should harmonise them.

How can government advance the cause of women in business?

When they see a woman doing business that is scalable, the woman has taken risk too, so take the risk and stop asking us for things we don’t have. There has to be paradigm shift if we want to walk the talk for startups to move to the next level.

Women too have to also change the way they do business.  We have to be more professional. We must be able to audit our accounts and pay our taxes even if it’s small amount you are doing. Make sure your documents are up to date because there are some grants you won’t be able to access without proper documentation.