About Peter Njonjo
Peter Njonjo, co-founder and former CEO of Twiga Foods, has spoken extensively about the company's mission to address inefficiencies in Africa's food supply chain. He has described the retail industry in Africa as "broken" and "very informal," noting that "pretty much nothing has changed over the last 50–60 years." Njonjo has cited the example of a tomato costing about $100 a metric ton in California compared to $420 in Nairobi and $2,500 in Kinshasa, arguing that "some of the world's poorest consumers are paying some of the highest prices when it comes to basic food items." He has stated that Africans on average spend half their disposable income on food, a figure he compared to the United States 150 years ago. Njonjo has said Twiga Foods aims to "leverage technology to build efficiency into some of these supply chains" and that "technology could provide a solution to accelerate food security."
Njonjo resigned as CEO of Twiga Foods and stepped down from its board in January 2024, though he remains a shareholder with a stake valued at over $1 million. He previously spent 21 years at The Coca-Cola Company, where his last role was President of West and Central Africa. Njonjo has credited his wife with encouraging him to sell their matrimonial home to finance Twiga Foods in its early days. He has also spoken about the importance of mentorship, saying that "there are many dreamers like myself" in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and that supporting them "really keeps me focused on the agenda of ensuring that we continue driving this multiplier effect."
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Peter Njonjo's recent appearances.
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Transcript (1 segments)
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Peter Njonjo0:00
Hi, my name is Peter Njonjo. I'm CEO and co-founder of Twiga Foods. Twiga Foods is a B2B e-commerce business that is focused on fixing Africa's broken retail markets. Now, why do we say that Africa's retail markets are broken? I think the key thing that illustrates this is a story of a tomato. A tomato in California costs about a hundred dollars a metric ton. In Nairobi, it costs about four hundred and twenty dollars a metric ton, while in markets like Kinshasa, it costs about two thousand five hundred dollars a metric ton. The question is, why is it that some of the world's poorest consumers are paying some of the highest prices when it comes to basic food items? The cause of this is around the structure of our retail markets. If you look at what has happened in the West over a couple of years, over the last tens of years, there's been a rapid consolidation, a lot of efficiency that has been built into those supply chains. In Africa, pretty much nothing much has changed over the last 50 or 60 years. The retail industry continues to be very, very informal, and this creates a very, very inefficient supply chain where producers are struggling to get their goods to the retailers. Because of that, consumers end up paying very, very high prices for the cost of food. Now, when I look at the amount of money that has been invested on the continent focused on smallholder farmers and creating food security, why is it that this is not working? We're seeing importation continuing to grow on the continent, we're seeing consumers continuing to pay higher prices on the continent. But the key thing is that we at Twiga believe that we're creating an alternative system where we can leverage technology to build efficiency into some of these supply chains and start to see the efficiency in the upstream side of these supply chains start translating to lower prices for consumers on the continent or across the continent. The reason why we want to share this idea with the world is that we believe that technology could provide a solution to accelerate food security.
