Mobolaji Ajayi is the founder and CEO of Purelife Pharmacy
From exporting Nigerian superfoods globally to innovating within the pharmacy sector, three entrepreneurs interviewed by How we made it in Africa in 2024 show how companies are seizing Nigeria’s alternatives.
1. Nigerian entrepreneur builds international superfood export enterprise
Nigerian-born Timi Oke has at all times been drawn to agriculture. Whereas working at a financial institution within the UK, he actively used LinkedIn to discover alternatives within the sector. In 2012, his efforts led him to attach with an importer in Mexico thinking about sourcing hibiscus from Nigeria.
Nigeria has grow to be a key player within the international hibiscus provide chain, pushed by a choice for the nation’s more healthy, non-GMO varieties.
On the time, Oke was nonetheless employed on the financial institution, so his brother and co-founder traveled to Kano, in northern Nigeria, to buy hibiscus from aggregators who sourced it from smallholder farmers within the area.
As soon as the primary order was accomplished and cost acquired, Oke left his banking job and moved again to Nigeria to concentrate on the enterprise full-time.
Initially, AgroEknor relied on aggregators to provide hibiscus, however this left the corporate with little management over pricing. Recognising the necessity for a distinct method, Oke pivoted to working immediately with smallholder farmers. Over time, the corporate experimented with numerous fashions of collaboration.
Immediately, AgroEknor works with over 7,000 smallholders. The corporate has arrange assortment centres close to the farmers and helps them in numerous methods to assist enhance their yields. AgroEknor has additionally invested in its processing capability, together with the addition of a fumigation chamber.
Watch our full interview with Timi Oke
2. Figuring out alternatives in Nigeria’s pharmacy sector
Mobolaji Ajayi is the founder and CEO of Nigeria’s Purelife Pharmacy, a enterprise that mixes pharmacy and first healthcare providers by way of each bodily shops and a web-based platform.
Ajayi recognized a spot available in the market for a pharmacy enterprise that goes past merely promoting remedy. She notes that pharmacies typically function the primary level of contact for a lot of Nigerians looking for healthcare.
The corporate opened its first bodily outlet in Lagos in 2021, supported by funding Ajayi raised from her household. Up to now, it has generated income 10 instances the preliminary funding whereas remaining totally bootstrapped.
Navigating regulatory hurdles was one of many early challenges for the enterprise, because it operates on the intersection of pharmacy, drugs, and know-how – every ruled by distinct laws.
One other persistent problem is expertise acquisition and retention. Nigeria has skilled an exodus of healthcare and tech professionals looking for higher alternatives overseas, making it more and more troublesome to rent and retain expert medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and tech specialists.
In 2023, Purelife launched a digital platform the place customers should buy healthcare merchandise, seek the advice of with medical doctors, and e-book lab providers, together with blood and urine assessments, in addition to vaccinations. Whereas Purelife offers a few of these providers immediately, it additionally collaborates with third-party suppliers, incomes a fee when sufferers are referred to those exterior companions.
Purelife has additionally expanded its bodily footprint to 4 branches throughout Lagos. These shops serve not solely walk-in prospects but additionally act as fulfilment centres for the corporate’s on-line enterprise. At present, about 25% of Purelife’s gross sales are generated on-line, a determine the CEO expects to develop over time.
Watch our full interview with Mobolaji Ajayi
3. Nigeria’s craft beer pioneer eyes $65m empire
“The Nigerian beer market is price $6.5 billion every year. Our objective is to get 1% of that. And if we get 1% of $6.5 billion, then that’s a $65 million a 12 months enterprise,” says Kevin Conroy, the Scottish-born co-founder and CEO of Bature Brewery, Nigeria’s first craft beer maker.
Based in 2017, Bature has launched a wide range of craft beer manufacturers infused with native elements. Its choices embrace Lagos Lager, Black Gold Stout (flavoured with Nigerian espresso beans), Harmattan Haze IPA (with mango and apricot notes), and Shakara (brewed with domestically sourced hibiscus). The corporate incorporates Nigeria’s vibrant music and vogue scenes into its packaging and advertising supplies.
Conroy arrived in Nigeria in 2012 to work on a UK Division for Worldwide Improvement mission geared toward bettering the West African nation’s enterprise and funding local weather. Initially stationed within the northern metropolis of Kano, he later moved to the capital, Abuja.
By 2016, Conroy had grown bored with ingesting business beers manufactured by multinational brewers Heineken, Diageo and AB InBev, which collectively management the market. Impressed by the worldwide rise of the craft beer trade, he determined to strive brewing his personal beer. With the assistance of his neighbour, James Turley, an Irishman, they arrange a small residence brewery in a spare bed room in Conroy’s Abuja house. Whereas Conroy continued his day job, the duo brewed on Saturdays. The beer would take two weeks to ferment, yielding 50 bottles, which they largely consumed themselves.
Conroy and Turley would convey brewing elements, similar to malt and hops, again of their suitcases each time they travelled to the UK. “It was hilarious on the airport once they inspected the luggage … We simply defined we have been making soup,” Conroy remembers.
Folks quickly began asking if they may purchase the beers, prompting Conroy to contemplate commercialising his passion. “Craft beer enterprise was blowing up within the UK and the US and we thought if we may simply take all these fruits, areas, flavours, tradition, music, vogue that we see round us, and really put it right into a beer, we are able to do one thing actually particular. So let’s attempt to truly flip this right into a enterprise,” he says.
Read our full interview with Kevin Conroy