Empowering women and girls alongside gender equality are fundamentally part of the Sustainable Development Goal 5 according to the United Nations. While various organisations across the world continue to make lasting efforts to achieve the stand-alone goal by 2030, the need to start from the small communities has become an integral part of organisations’ Corporation Social Responsibility.
It is, therefore, to contribute its quota that Oya Food Nigeria, a growing agribusiness that offers nutritional values to Nigerians, is empowering hundreds of local female rice farmers across Nigeria.
According to its founder and CEO, Chidiadi Madumere, it 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 emphasised.
While local female farmers produce the raw materials, Madumere highlighted 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.
The CEO further listed 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.
Meanwhile, 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 the Oya Food Beaver Jollof Rice Outreach, it distributed food packs to Destitute people in Ajah area of Lagos State.
“This is because we strongly believe that food is essential to human existence,” says Madumere, adding that “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 includes children age zero to 16, pregnant women, lactating mothers, patients of diet related diseases, seniors citizens ages 50 years and above and the indigent families.