Ejiro’s story
Ejiro Jakpa is the CEO and founder of Nicnax Enterprises in Nigeria. In 2020, she took part in our Road to Growth programme, which gave her the knowledge she needed to better handle her cashflow and improve her production plan, as well as the confidence to succeed…
You support a woman, you support a nation.
My name is Ejiro Jakpa. I am the CEO and founder of Nicnax Enterprises. In the last few months, we’ve upgraded from an enterprise to a company. What we do at Nicnax is we manufacture healthy foods and snacks which are affordable, readily available and very healthy for the health-conscious customer. 5 years ago, we birthed our first granola, and now we are the largest indigenous producer of granola in Nigeria.
One of the ways in which our business has impacted communities is due to the fact that about 50% of our sourcing is from female-owned businesses. For example, our coconut comes from one of the largest producers of coconut here in Nigeria, which happens to be run by a female. Our honey is also from a female-owned business, and by getting our materials from people like this, we empower them, and they also empower other women around them. We also source our groundnuts from a little village in Niger state, thereby empowering the locals directly.
One of the major challenges of being an entrepreneur generally in Nigeria is electricity. About 30-40% of our processes rely on electricity. Another major challenge is the steady decline of the Nigerian economy. Another challenge is finding local manufacturers, there are various machines needs that will move my business forward, but our engineers don’t have the access to this technology.
Find out more about Road to Growth in Nigeria
Road to Growth is one of the Foundation’s three flagship programmes. It is highly scalable and adaptable. The Foundation is actively seeking funding partnerships to enable the programme to launch in, but not limited, to Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania and Mozambique, with each iteration carefully adapted for a local context. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss potential partnerships!
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