By the Witness Radio team.
In rural Senegal, women’s groups use roasting, grinding, and mixing equipment to turn local beans, spices, and traditional ingredients into a natural product called Sumpak. This product is offered as an alternative to the industrial bouillon cubes common in West African kitchens. Sumpak is marketed as a locally sourced option rooted in agroecological farming and traditional food knowledge.
For its creators, Sumpak symbolizes a continent-wide movement where small-scale farmers and grassroots groups create businesses that embody self-reliance, sustainability, and a shift away from dependence on industrial agribusiness.
In Uganda, Senegal, Cameroon, and other African countries, farmer groups are trying local food processing, seed systems, ecological farming, and direct markets. They want to change how healthy food is produced, processed, and sold. Their efforts are not just for the environment. They are also driven by economic survival, food sovereignty, and frustration with systems that depend on imported inputs, foreign-controlled supply chains, and industrial food products.
Highlighting these grassroots efforts, the initiatives were recently discussed during a webinar organized by the Agroecology Fund to launch a report documenting grassroots agroecological enterprises across the continent.
“We asked ourselves what would happen if we combined the creativity and power of social movements. This was an effort to provide support to networks and organizations within the Agroecology movements that are also working to support the agroecology enterprises,” Daniel Moss, co-director of the fund, said during the online report launch.
The report, Agroecological Entrepreneurship Starts Here, draws from business planning grants awarded to 15 organizations across Africa. The projects supported by the grants ranged from cassava flour processing in Uganda to local bread-making flour initiatives in Cameroon and women-led food processing enterprises in Senegal, among others.
The report contends that agroecology represents both an environmental practice and a strategic pathway for building locally controlled, sustainable economies.
For decades, the agricultural industry in Africa and globally has favored industrial systems. These rely on hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, and export crops. Big agribusinesses and commercial farms often get grants, subsidies, financing, and policy support. Meanwhile, small-scale agroecological enterprises struggle to access even modest capital.
The report launch noted that many grassroots agricultural businesses need $10,000 to $250,000. They require funds to expand production, improve packaging, or buy processing equipment. However, the findings show that most lenders and investors focus on much larger commercial projects.
“There’s a huge finance gap,” Jennifer Astone, a co-author of the report, revealed, adding that “Smallholder farmers, cooperatives and agroecological entrepreneurs are systematically excluded from finance and policy support that fuels conventional industrial agribusiness.”
In Uganda, the Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF) worked with farmer groups producing okra powder, cassava flour, pineapple products, and biomass briquettes.
According to ESAFF, some groups received grinding machines and value-addition equipment, while others were trained in packaging, branding, and marketing. Several enterprises, with the support of the grant, later registered formally as businesses after seeing growth opportunities emerge.
Nancy Mugimba, coordinator of ESAFF, said the grants helped transform loosely organized farmer activities into more structured enterprises.
“One of the things we discovered is that these businesses can actually work. The farmers became more organized and innovative.” Nancy said.
According to Nancy, one women’s group producing cassava flour improved its drying and processing methods to target health-conscious consumers, including people managing diabetes, while another youth group shifted from chemically grown pineapples to organic production after discovering growing demand for sweeter agroecological fruit.
“Farmers were trained on how to handle their products for their target markets. As a result, they are now producing higher-quality products than before and have successfully introduced them to the market,” she added.
In Senegal, the women-led movement, Nous Sommes la Solution, focused on replacing industrial bouillon cubes with natural products made from local ingredients.
The movement joins more than 500 rural women’s associations and 175,000 members across West Africa. It claims that more processed food additives have raised health concerns such as hypertension and kidney disease.
This bouillon uses low-cost beans and several prep steps: pre-cook, peel, wash, then ferment the beans. The beans are then processed into a powder. We rely on local skills and local produce. We also aim to promote high-nutritive value products, said Mariama Sonko during the report launch. She added that women can make something local, providing income to support a healthy lifestyle.
Their product, Sumpak, uses fermented local beans, spices, and traditional knowledge. With support from the grants, the women obtained food safety certification, trademark registration, and improved packaging.
This grant lets us focus on administrative tasks for production and sales. We received Food Safety Certification in Senegal. We can now produce and sell Sumpak, Sonko said. She noted that demand has grown faster than expected, making producers consider expanding storage and processing.
In Cameroon, another agroecological initiative focused on the problem of dependence on imported wheat, which has affected many African countries. The West African country imports significant amounts of wheat for bread production, exposing local food systems to global market disruptions and price shocks.
Global disruptions, such as the Russia-Ukraine war and COVID-19, worsened these vulnerabilities. This led to soaring prices. Data from the National Shippers’ Council of Cameroon shows that the country imported 278,408 tons of wheat in Q2 2025, at a cost of over CFA45 billion.
According to the report, the Cameroonian organization Service d’Appui aux Initiatives Locales de Développement (SAILD) responded by promoting bread and pastries made partly from locally produced cassava and sweet potato flour.
The project brought together flour processors, bakers, regulators, and financial institutions to explore how local alternatives could replace imported wheat.
“We realized that dependence on imports weakens local economies. We need local production and local consumption systems.” Mr. Rodrigue Kouang, Coordinator of SAILD’s agroecology program, mentioned.
The report urges policies and networks that empower agroecological entrepreneurship and recommends practical support for farmer organizations.
