Partners in Food Solutions
The African continent could be the breadbasket of the world, yet currently it imports more food than it exports. Partners in Food Solutions brings together volunteer experts from global food and food processing companies with promising companies on the African continent to help them scale their businesses. The partnership works in two directions: it is a window through which both sides find opportunities.
Janet Anderson, June 2025
Great business ideas are often sparked through contact with a new person, culture, or environment. When Ugandan couple Erina and Joel Guma were living and working in the UK, they came across a product they had not seen at home – pasteurized liquid eggs. They thought the product might work back in Uganda, where egg production was growing fast, so they took their savings and moved back home to set up a business, Pristine Foods, to produce it. The first year was understandably tough. They had the equipment, but they struggled to extend their product’s shelf life beyond 2 weeks. This was not long enough for their customers, mostly catering businesses and bakeries.
To tackle the challenge, Pristine Foods reached out to Partners in Food Solutions (PFS). PFS is an independent nonprofit organization that works to strengthen food security, improve nutrition, and increase economic development across Africa. They link corporate volunteers from global companies in the food and food processing industries with promising businesses in Africa.
The key to food security is not just growing more food, it is also about access. This is why food processors on the African continent are so important.
Mandla Nkomo,
CEO of Partners in Food Solutions
PFS put Pristine Foods in touch with Hector Peña, Sales Manager at Bühler Mexico. In weekly calls over a couple of years he mentored the management team, helping them with a wide range of skills in leadership, public relations, production, and project execution. Today, Pristine Foods has not only extended the shelf life of its products; it has also ultimately expanded into the export market, grown its business seven-fold, added mayonnaise to its portfolio, and now has more than three times as many full-time employees.
“This is a great example that demonstrates how PFS works,” explains Mandla Nkomo, CEO of PFS. “Hector Peña is a seasoned executive at Bühler, working in a complicated market. He was able to use his experience to help Pristine Foods navigate complex scenarios.”
PFS sees its job as identifying such opportunities and facilitating them. “We are building a technology superhighway between the global North and the countries on the African continent,” says Nkomo. Companies like Bühler, General Mills, and Cargill, who are at the cutting edge of food processing, support PFS because they see the opportunity for food technology transfer into the fastest growing continent on the planet. On the other side, PFS selects African food processors who recognize the opportunity and are willing to learn and to deploy technology to grow their businesses.
The organization currently operates in 11 countries on the African continent, developing regional hubs with a critical mass of companies that can benefit. “We look at a whole region’s food system so that our impact can be bigger,” says Nkomo. To date, PFS has helped nearly 2,500 companies.
The majority of PFS’s clients process staple products like maize, wheat, rice, and vegetables. These companies seek support in a number of areas. The most common request is for support in food safety and quality: how to build reliable, effective, credible food safety systems within their process infrastructure, to obtain the necessary certifications, and to deliver safe food to consumers.
The next biggest areas are new product development and business strategy. “We look for companies with the potential to scale,” says Nkomo.
Also vital is equipment consultation and process engineering, two areas where Bühler’s expertise comes to the fore and Bühler volunteers can provide world-leading support. “Figuring out new processes, new lines, and line extensions is complicated. The wrong advice can be an expensive mistake if you pay for equipment you cannot use. Our volunteers help these businesses to choose equipment that is fit for purpose and helps them to scale,” says Nkomo. Equally important is mentorship. The average age of employees at PFS’s client companies is 25. PFS gives these young people access to a global pool of experienced professionals, like Peña at Bühler.
The irony is that the countries of the African continent have the potential to produce more than enough food for their growing populations, and yet they still spend large amounts on food imports – in 2023 more than USD 83 billion, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Mostly these imports are staples such as wheat, corn, and rice. North and East Africa is able to produce enough of their own wheat. Nkomo, who previously worked for CGIAR (the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), a global research partnership for food security, says there are numerous reasons for the shortfall. One of these is low yields, which are caused by a number of factors such as time of planting, plant population, and post-harvest losses. This could be solved by providing good agronomy support to farmers.
The solutions are there, but there is still a challenge. Only a few countries on the African continent are technically classified as “food secure”, meaning that they produce more calories than what is known of their demand. But this does not give the complete picture. South Africa, for example, is one of the countries that is deemed food secure, yet it is still the case that 25 percent of its population goes to bed hungry every day.
“The key to food security is not just growing more food, it is also about access,” says Nkomo. “This is why food processors on the African continent are so important. They turn raw corn or rice into a product that is nutritious, safe, affordable, and available for consumers.” PFS sees its role as priming the pump – getting the food processing sector ready to respond effectively as yields increase, thereby ensuring that the raw materials produced end up as food on people’s plates. Nkomo sees huge opportunities at every level. “If you look at the portfolio of foods in Africa, including what we call forgotten or local grains, you realize we are not even scratching the surface of the potential,” he says. “For example, there is a great opportunity in developing the value chains for sorghum or for fonio, a grain which is very important in West Africa and highly nutritious.”
Mandla Nkomo is the CEO of Partners in Food Solutions (PFS), an independent nonprofit organization that works to strengthen food security, improve nutrition, and increase economic development across Africa by linking corporate volunteers from global food and food processing companies with promising businesses in Africa. Nkomo was born in Zimbabwe and has had a career spanning 25 years in the African agri-food sector. Before taking up his role at PFS in July 2024, he served in a variety of roles in international organizations and the private sector, including Chief Growth Officer for CGIAR’s Excellence in Agronomy Initiative.
Africa is the only continent that will still have a growing population at the turn of the century. It also has the most fertile land. Nkomo believes that the continent could, in future, step up and become the breadbasket for the world, providing for other regions that suffer shortfalls due to climate change. “With the right investments and policies, Africa can not only respond to the local market opportunity but also be ready to be a global food supplier,” he says.
For volunteers, providing support to one of PFS’s client companies is a chance to use their knowledge to have a meaningful impact on food security. For the companies that support PFS, like Bühler, it is an invaluable opportunity to gain access and insights into what is happening in the African business space.
Last but by no means least, there is clearly a wider beneficial impact for consumers and the market. “We have an impact in value chains both upstream and downstream. For example, when our client companies build stable and growing businesses, they are able to procure more from farmers. About 1.8 million farmers are impacted because of the sourcing decisions our clients make,” explains Nkomo. “On the consumer side, our clients are making billions of safer, more nutritious, and affordable meal servings available in their markets. That is massive.”
With the right investments and policies, Africa can not only respond to the local market opportunity but also be ready to be a global food supplier.
Mandla Nkomo,
CEO of Partners in Food Solutions
With significant changes underway in how development is financed in Africa, the role of the private sector has become even more important. “If the private sector in Africa grows, particularly in food processing and agriculture, we will have enough creativity and entrepreneurship to resolve the challenges even without massive funding from other governments,” explains Nkomo. “There is a business case for this. When a volunteer invests a few hours to support one of our clients, this translates into business growth, into procurement from farmers, and into consumers receiving safe, affordable, and nutritious food. I genuinely believe we have a shot at creating the largest private sector platform on the African continent of food processors that are well-connected to the global North and are therefore able to rapidly transform and respond to the challenges Africa faces.”
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