Creating opportunity with food waste.

I am the founder and CEO of Chiblenders Green a seasoned entrepreneur, an international development enthusiast with great passion for politics and development work across the world especially in the most vulnerable areas, I am broad based, global in Outlook and approach while acting local.

Role is to manage and coordinate the overall resources and operations of the company with the right team.

I am very active in finding, investing resources for advancement of Chiblenders Green and to help it succeed, studied Business Studies and life experience is my best teacher

• PAST EXPERIENCE

Legislative Aid:                  To Chairman House Committee on African  corporation and integration National Assembly

2000 – 2001

National Coordinator:     Young Talent Discovery Project Organized Nigeria Team that represented Sub-Saharan in European Union contests for young scientists in Copenhagen in 2008

Collaborated with UNESCO in organizing National Conference/exhibition: in 2008

Co-Founder:                        

ICON Continental Nig Ltd  

ICON Valley Hotels 

In Nigeria, small scale farmers struggle to preserve their crops for lack of storage facilities, affordable technology, making them vulnerable, result in excessive food wastage of about 50%, yet hunger represents a critical challenge for the country. About 40% of Nigerians go to bed hungry.

We are working to protect agricultural communities from harmful effect of waste by buying surplus and deformed produce; fruits and vegetable which we convert into nutritious and healthy powered form that retains all its nutrients for longer shelf life. We strongly believe in managing health issues with plant based products.

Chiblenders Green is proposing for Elevate Prize to buy our health and well-being products and donate to food banks in America. This action will elevate the lives of farmers in rural Nigeria because it will give us access to US market. Building the Supply Chain with Small Scale Farmers will lift them out of poverty.   

According to statistics, a third of all world food production goes to waste, equivalent to 1.3 billion tons every year, on the same planet where over 600 million people starve every day. The carbon foot print of this waste is 3.3 G tones of Carbon-dioxide equivalent. Majority of waste happens in the developing countries especially with small scale farmers in rural areas such as Nigeria, it also occurs in retail and consumer level in developed countries.

According to UNICEF, in Nigeria over 2 million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and 7% of child bearing age suffer same.

The underlying causes of malnutrition are poverty and inadequate food intakes.

Two out of every three Nigerian live below the poverty line of $1.9 per day income.

Agriculture offers the best option for economic development in Nigeria unfortunately 50% of perishable farm produce that grows in Nigeria ends in landfills due to lack of inadequate storage facilities, transportation, affordable technology, illiteracy. In essence there’s lack of efficiency in the food supply chain. Majority of these waste occur with small scale farmers in rural areas making them vulnerable and poor. Over 40% of Nigerians go to bed hungry. 

Chiblenders Green is fully committed to eliminating the waste of agricultural produce which exists within the logistic and supply chain in Nigeria Agricultural Sector.

We realized that the best way to achieve our goal is by converting perishable food into a nutritious and healthy powder form which saves all of its nutrients for consumption at a later date.

For the time being, our target food types are vegetables and fruits sourced from small scale farmers in rural areas.

This gives us the opportunity to convert surplus perishable foods that would often go to waste during the logistic/supply chain to be processed into edible powdered form that has been dried and grinded so it can be stored for direct consumption in many different ways.

Our vegetables and fruits powder is a new approach for formulating fortified food for health and well-being when added to drinking water, cereal, and baked foods etc because of new findings about their phytonutrients. At Chiblenders Green we believe strongly in adopting certain combination of foods instead of drugs, as a source for rich health and well-being.

We have different health and well-being products created from raw material powder. 

It serves the small scale farmers in rural areas of Kan and Jos in Nigeria.

We seek out fruits and vegetable farmers through farmers cooperative, family farmers, our representatives in the communities interface and proffer our services and solutions.

Problem:

• Lack of storage facilities
• Lack of affordable technology
• Lack of transportation
• Illiteracy which is caused by difficult living conditions including poverty

Solution – We buy up surplus perishable produce from the farmers, transport, access and solicit the services of food processing plants with best standard and convert to powder to retain its nutrients for longer shelf life.

We proffered simple yet effective solutions by empowering them with affordable mobile phone which they exchange with surplus produce each farm season. it has helped improve their business opportunities, they receive up-to-date information on how to manage and improve their business in their local language.

The method has drastically reduce waste by about 30 – 40% and increased the output by 45% in these community.

Our collaboration with the farmers has given them hope, improves their well-being, protect them from poverty and hunger. It increases their income thereby encourage them to produce more.

Now, they can afford to send their children to school. 

Elites and political class in the Northern Nigeria left the small scale farmers in that area to survive without infrastructure, this is a deliberate action.

Out project elevate all the dimension of the prize Chilblenders Green collaboration will lift the farmers out of poverty, change their attitude, behavior, creates prosperity and opportunity to send their children to school especially the girl child instead of marrying them off as child bride. Converting surplus produce to powder and building supply chain on veggies/fruits powder which will become raw materials for food, health, and pharmaceutical sectors will solve food waste problem globally.

I had a major health challenge which persisted for 9 years and reliance on prescription medication for care wasn’t improving my health, I started to develop other complication as reaction to the medication, when I had my only son, I  couldn’t do exclusive breast feeding because of the blood pressure medications I had to take.

My ancestors believe strongly in adopting certain combination of foods, instead of drugs as a source for rich health and well-being. This gave me a paradigm shift to change my life style to be healthy enough to take care of my family.

Thereafter I dedicated to stop the medication and live solely on highly nutrition’s fruits, veggies spices and herbs.

I haven’t taken blood pressure, fatigue, sugar control medication for over 5 years.

We started with fresh veggies/fruits smoothies it used to spoil because of epileptic electricity and we don’t add preservatives or addictive, we needed a lasting solution that will prolong the shelf life.

The small scale farmers we bought from were struggling with finding solution to eliminated their excess produce, almost 56% of their produce waste because of spoiling. It was ton find solution that gives birth to our project.

According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) small scale farming is the answer to feeding the world. Farmers are key factors in the fight against hunger, in reality without proper food storage, food security and sustainability will not be achieved except we embrace converting farm produce to power for longer shelf life.

In Northern Nigeria poverty rate is 80% with 75% of small scale farmers.

Political class and elites in the region left the small scale in the area to survive without infrastructure, this is a deliberate action. This farmers are illiterate they don’t know the value of education this makes them vulnerable. The political class use this to their advantage, they don’t want the children of this poor families to be useful, they use them as tools to achieve their political and selfish desire. This is the main reason why Almajiri system thrives in the North. System where a man with no means of survival marrying 4 wives having many children and sending them out without care this children lives on the street, and are used for religious mayhem, child bride, political thugs. Our project will end their vulnerability and poverty.

As the founder and CEO of Chiblenders Green, am a serial entrepreneur, studied Business Studies with skills in marketing, project development and management, life skills, personal development and market research. 

I have volunteering experience in farming sector, worked in Vulnerable areas as the National Coordinator of Young Talent Discovery Project a non-profit organisation, visited children in volatile areas. I personally know what it means to see vulnerable and poor families marry off their girl child as child bride, because of poverty. 

It is my love and passion of making the world a better place that gave birth to Young Talent Discovery Project. In 2007 I have a first hand knowledge of what vulnerability, poverty is all about.  

Our organization has collaborated with international organizations to solve some of this problem of child labor, girls not going to school because of attitude and behavior of illiterate parents. 

I strongly believe that on ground experience, with the right support i will set a standard that the world will replicate in ending food waste and empower the vulnerable families to take charge of their lives.  

In November, 2019, we were preparing for Christmas production. This event took place at spectra incubation center Jos, we borrowed money with 15% interest rate monthly in other to meet up with all financial obligation.

Spectra failed to deliver for lack of efficiency, they took orders they couldn’t meet up with.

The printing company we gave contract to design and also print, did a good job with the design but messed up the entire printing because of not laying the design very well, this destroyed everything the tea pack shape looked funny and ugly. The company couldn’t pay.

Spectra food processing delayed our work which caused spoilage of produce. I told Spectra to dry and grind the spoiled produce to powder which we sold to a big agro firm as organic fertilizer.

Secondly I decided to try transparent pouch to find remedy for the tea pack, indeed it worked perfectly well because our 4 different tea are now mix together and package in a transparent pouch pack making Chiblender Green the first company in Nigeria to package 4 different types of tea in one pack, it is selling very well, our misfortune turned to opportunity

One faithful evening a man walked into our office i was outside discussing with some people, he met the receptionist and asked to see my husband a Co-founder of ICON Valley Hotels. My husband wasn't on sit, he was directed to me. The man was in pains, crying because there was no food in his house and the children had no food to eat for 2 days, they were so weak from crying. In the process, i learnt he is a security guard working for a lady in the street where our office is located. Her employer traveled for 2 months without pay, which made the man vulnerable and hunger took over his children. 

I went home packed some food, including fresh produce that would have spoiled if i had not given it to the man. 

i also gave him a token, the way the man thanked me brought tears to my eyes. I knew there must be a way that people in the community can have access to free meals or raw food. The encounter gave birth to free corn meal we give to vulnerable families. 

we are launching an app where people will find free food come 2021.

Our innovation is that it provides a shift away from traditional approaches to this problem and offering value for multiple stakeholders on a long term opportunity. As part of our core mandate is to use organic food as a means to achieve good health, eliminate food waste in the supply chain, and help farmers minimize that exposure to loss and financial ruin.

• It is important to note that our veggies/fruits powder when added to drinking water or baked foods; it becomes a new approach to formulating fortified food for health and well-being because of new findings of their phytonutrients.
• Using food as a source to manage health issues instead of drugs which its side effects add to many more health problems.
• The biggest concern was how to automate and streamline the process of all our operations and still be able to keep all our quality control measures in place.
• We adopted the use of Information Technology as a means to be digitally present where we could not be present physically. We hired competent and reliable community representatives, train them in, Implementation of our operational guidelines
• They use their smartphones with Zoom mobile application installed on them to communicate with us based on our predefined schedules seasonally.
• This has eliminated significant financial and time constraints on the day to day operations of the company enabling us to focus on fine-tuning our operations for expansion and it has boasted our supply chains.
• We use Information Technology for daily Agro-processing operations.

CHI BLENDERS GREEN theory of change is to produce dried, blended fruits and vegetable in powdered form for large scale consumers in the pharmaceutical, health care and nutrition industry and for international export of our products to global markets. In order to achieve this, we plan on building a supply chain network of up to 30,000 (thirty thousand) small scale farmers. This large number will be better managed by grouping the farmers into cooperative societies of 500 – 1000 members as a minimum, where possible.
We also have plans to expand our distribution network to 200,000 (two hundred thousand) retail stores Globally and aim to reach 75 million consumers.
We plan on expanding our farmer empowerment programme of providing them with access to communication technologies as about 75% of  small scale farmers in rural communities don't have access to mobile phones, radios or electricity. This becomes a productivity barrier in the supply chain as these farmers will not have instant access to vital information and will not be able to communicate with buyers which can help to reduce or eliminate post-harvest losses.
Promotion of environmental stewardship – This will be done by enlightening rural farmers about the negative consequences of food waste, landfills and their negative impact on the environment. As an incentive, we would also demonstrate the economic and environmental benefits of practitioners of environmental stewardship.

Our project serves over 6,500 people, eg my neighbors' pregnant wife was able to consume our date powder which helped reduce her morning sickness. 

It serves currently about 150 farmers in our network. 

Our customers have benefited from this products because many with underlying health issues such as diabetes, ulcer, fatigue, high blood pressure, our products have help them live a fulfilled life. 

We are working towards increasing our supply chain in the next one year by incorporating in to our network about 200 more farmers and about 10,000 farmers come next 5 years. 

Chiblenders Green through aggressive marketing will increase our customers base by 500% in one year. 

In the next one year we shall have over 50,000 people consuming our project. By 5 years it will increase to 10 million people global.

In the next One year we shall incorporate into our network about 200 retail shops and by 5 years we shall be heading to 5000.

Our project serves over 6,500 people, e.g my neighbors' pregnant wife was able to consume our date powder which helped reduce her morning sickness. 

It serves currently about 150 farmers in our network. 

Our customers have benefited from this products because many with underlying health issues such as diabetes, ulcer, fatigue, high blood pressure, our products have help them live a fulfilled life. 

We are working towards increasing our supply chain in the next one year by incorporating in to our network about 200 more farmers and about 10,000 farmers come next 5 years. 

Chiblenders Green through aggressive marketing will increase our customers base by 500% in one year. 

In the next one year we shall have over 50,000 people consuming our project. By 5 years it will increase to 10 million people global.

In the next One year we shall incorporate into our network about 200 retail shops and by 5 years we shall be heading to 5000.

• Political challenges which include government bad policies that affect startups in Nigeria. We have had difficulty in accessing loans because of politics and corruption.
• Lack of equal opportunity funding to support our research and development and scalability needs, there is such difficulty in getting loans because of gender. “Women usually don’t get the same opportunity when it comes to borrowing money for business”.
• Ethnicity, Nepotism where you only get Federal and State intervention if you know someone influential regardless of what merit your project has.
• Market barrier 
• Lack of storage facilities 
• Transportation and road network
• Quality control and hygiene 

• Financial 
• we will rely solely on private funding/grants because government funding is sometimes highly politicized and difficult to get without having the right connections.
• Market barrier and opportunity; this is where we need Elevate Prize contacts and connections, most especially their patronage. 
• we need Elevate  Prize Foundation to buy our health and well-being products for the American Market and donate to Food Banks, this would help our organization access US Market. By doing this, we will build strong fruits and vegetable powder supply chains in Nigeria. This will lift small scales farmers in Nigeria out of poverty and create prosperity. 
• Our project is an open source which can be replicate all over the world. 

• In-kind: Chi Blenders Green has received unexpected support from well-wishers in various capacities. We receive mentoring support from Professor Azikiwe Peter Onwualu, Former Director General Raw Materials Research and Development Council (Rtd) and Dr. Mara Hunber, University of Buffalo. 

• Raw Materials Research and Development Council: We’re expecting to receive support from Raw Materials Research and Development Council as they have pledged to support us with one standard food processing machine. 
• Farmers Club of Nigeria: We collaborate on farmers welfare and exchange ideas. 
• We work with all our partners through Teleconferencing, Email and phone calls.