In 2015, inside a modest borrowed kitchen in Lagos, three determined African women gathered over pots bubbling with palm oil and ginger, measuring spices by hand and dreaming bigger than their cramped space could hold.
Nana Afoah Appiah-Korang from Ghana, Kudzayi Hove from Zimbabwe, and Nigeria’s own Onome Allu had a simple yet radical idea: build an African food systems platform that would not only feed people, but transform how Africa feeds itself, and the world.
They called it Amayi Foods – “Amayi,” a nod to motherhood, nurture, and the African matriarch’s enduring role as keeper of community kitchens and local food wisdom. Today, that humble venture is a significant force in Nigeria’s food and beverage industry, with a stronghold in traditional markets and an eye on global export shelves.
Yet its story is about far more than condiments or spice mixes; it is living proof that Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah’s dialectical materialism is not buried in dusty archives, but alive in new factories, empowered farmers, and pan-African boardrooms.
A Pan-African Idea Rooted in Local Soil
Amayi Foods is proudly pan-African, not just in its founding team but in its mission: to process Africa’s bounty on African soil, using 100% natural ingredients grown by local farmers and turned into authentic West African condiments, sauces, and food mixes that carry the taste of home wherever they go.
In a world where Africa still exports raw cocoa but imports chocolate, exports cashews but imports nut butters, Amayi stands as a quiet rebellion: they source raw, process local, build value chains, and feed back into the community. They don’t just buy tomatoes and peppers, they empower the smallholders who grow them, providing stable off-take, better prices, and training to raise yields sustainably. In doing so, they keep more of the wealth in the communities that nurture the continent’s food.
The Inheritance of a Visionary
When Kudzayi Hove mentioned—almost in passing—that her form teacher was Margaret Nkrumah, wife of the son of Ghana’s first President and a quiet matriarch of pan-African ideals, it felt like a quiet revelation: some legacies do not fade; they flow, like an unbroken river, through those who carry their spirit forward. As if to seal this lineage, Margaret Nkrumah was also headmistress to Nana Afoah Appiah-Korang at SOS-HGIC in Ghana, another link in a chain of leaders shaped by Nkrumah’s vision of an Africa economically and culturally free.
Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah’s dialectical materialism was not mere intellectual posturing; it was action. He dreamed of an Africa that processed its cocoa, spun its cotton, and smelted its bauxite.
He built the Akosombo Dam, which still powers large swathes of Ghana and West Africa; the Tema Industrial City; the Bonsa Tyre Factory; the Aboso Glass Factory; the Juapong Textiles; and the Nsawam Cannery, a web of industrial clusters designed to make Ghana self-reliant, resilient, and competitive.
Where colonialism once extracted, Nkrumah built structures to retain. Where exploiters once looted, he imagined factories and power plants that would multiply local value. His great project was unfinished, but for entrepreneurs like the women behind Amayi Foods, the work continues.
Industrialising Flavour, Empowering Community
Since 2015, Amayi has grown from that single borrowed kitchen into an export-oriented food company whose spice mixes and West African condiments are staples in Nigeria’s bustling traditional markets. From Lagos to Ibadan to Accra and Harare, Amayi’s products are a bridge between old food traditions and modern supply chains.
Yet behind every jar of pepper sauce or spice blend lies a larger economic mission: build systems that make smallholder farmers part of the big picture, invest in cleaner, safer processing, employ local youth in dignified work, and develop food value chains that keep African wealth circulating on African soil.
It is, quite simply, Nkrumah’s thesis adapted for a new age: the material conditions of Africa can only change when Africa owns the means to transform its raw resources into finished products – food, steel, textiles, energy. Amayi Foods is proving it one taste at a time.
The New Builders – Not Just Talking, But Doing
While many conferences invoke pan-African unity as a slogan, Amayi’s pan-African team lives it in practice: Ghanaian Nana Appiah-Korang leads exports and investor relations, opening cross-border corridors that echo Nkrumah’s dream of a borderless, economically integrated continent.
Zimbabwe’s Kudzayi Hove steers strategy with the deep conviction of someone whose umbilical cord, as she says, is tied to the pan-African struggle itself. Nigeria’s Onome Allu drives sales and product development with the sharp instinct of one who knows that to change a market, you must first understand its taste buds and daily habits.
Together, they prove that the future does not lie in raw exports alone; it lies in the factories, the branding, the logistics, the shelf space, and the jobs created along the way.
The Dialectic: From Independence to Industrial Sovereignty
If Osagyefo’s vision began with “Seek ye first the political kingdom…”, Amayi’s founders are answering the unfinished half: seek ye next the economic kingdom, and all other freedoms will follow.
From Lagos, this message radiates outward: Africa does not have to stay the world’s raw pantry. It can be its processor, brand owner, and exporter of finished goods that tell authentic stories – stories that keep more wealth in African communities, pay farmers fairly, and put local talent to work.
This is not aid. This is agency. This is the dialectical materialism that says, as conditions change, so too must strategy, from the borrowed kitchen to the factory floor to the shipping container bound for export markets.
The Revolution is Edible
So the next time you savour a spoonful of West African stew, seasoned with Amayi’s signature blends like TomePeppe and other rich, natural condiments, remember: you are not just tasting food. You are tasting a modern, living chapter of Nkrumah’s vision, one that lives on in every meal, every farmer empowered, and every border crossed by bold African enterprise.
A story of three women, three nations, and one continent insisting that independence must be practical, profitable, and transformative.
If Africa must rise, it will rise on its own terms, in the hands of entrepreneurs who build factories, uplift communities, and refuse to leave value on the table.
May it multiply.
May it endure.
May it win.
