Entrepreneurship Zone: 19 February 2025 : Ghana: Entrepreneur spots gap for better packaged local foods

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Entrepreneurship Zone: 19 February  2025 : Ghana: Entrepreneur spots gap
for better packaged local foods

 


 

 


 <https://www.firstcapitalbank.co.zw/> 

 


 

 


 

 

 



An attendant stocks Meannan Foods products on shelves at the Marina Mall
Supermarket. Accra, Ghana.

By Sefakor Fekpe

A closer look at the journey of Ghana-based food processing entrepreneur
Charity Adupong, founder and CEO of Meannan Foods.

For years, Charity Adupong’s shopping experiences were marked with
disappointment as she searched for nutritious local foods in major shopping
malls and retail stores. The few that were on the shelves lacked attractive
packaging.

Increasingly she realised that a huge opportunity existed in providing
shoppers in Ghana with well-packaged indigenous foods. She decided to tap
into the growing demand.

“I didn’t like the way our markets are structured. We openly display food
with flies flying all over,” Adupong explains, as she moves around one of
three different factory facilities she now runs.

Only in her early 20s at the time and part of a family supported by a
single mother, Adupong took matters into her own hands.

After getting the green light from Shoprite to supply them with her
products, she started raising funds by saving. She proceeded to register her
business and moved to certify her products with the Ghana Standards
Authority, the Food Research Institute, and the Food and Drugs Authority
where she also received training.

Luckily, Adupong had some experience in business before she launched what
today is Meannan Foods. She had started out buying and selling second-hand
clothes and anything she could lay her hands on. She wanted to attend
fashion school but that dream was truncated due to the cost.

She has over the years invested in state-of-the-art machines and technology
to ensure the company has packaging that can compete with imported products.

Meannan Foods offers a diverse range of products, including cassava powder,
prekese (aidan fruit) powder, ginger powder, garri (a type of cassava
flour), onion powder, and corn grits. Its biggest seller is Tom Brown, a
high-protein, cereal-based porridge that is also affordable.

As she moves around her factory, inspecting dried cassava chips spread on
racks and neatly covered with blue nets, it is clear that her sense of
aesthetic extends beyond the packaging on her product labels.

“Having our processing plant close to our farmers helps us to be able to
process them in time to get the best quality out of it, and also add on to
the shelf life so that in the lean season there is still food,” Adupong
says.

Currently, with 33 employees, the company’s strategic location in
Afienya-Mataheko of the Ningo-Prampram District of the Greater Accra Region
helps in sourcing raw materials from different parts of the country.

“We are supporting our small community by giving jobs to people and when I
came here first we didn’t have light (power). I had to bring light. I had to
bring water. Being an entrepreneur in Ghana is also being like a government,
and also a contractor,” Adupong says.

“The biggest challenge of a business like mine is sourcing the right raw
materials. There is this thing we say, ‘garbage in, garbage out’, so what
you put in is what will come out. In sourcing it is very difficult to get
the quality that we need,” she further explains.

 

Adupong wants Meannan to become a household name and for local foods to be
just as attractive as imported food on the shelves. Her products are
currently found in different branches of Shoprite, Melcom and other retail
shops.

Emelia Dodoo is a supervisor at the Marina Mall Supermarket in Accra which
stocks Meannan products, but a significant number of the items on her
shelves are imported due to customer preference. “I think it is very
important for locally made products to be given a facelift in terms of
branding quality of their product to attract people from all walks of life,
even those in the diaspora. And then to attract malls like Marina to restock
their products and then take their brands in Ghana international. And so we
have a brand like Meannan who we have been restocking their products for
close to five years now because of the quality of their products and the
packaging as well,” Dodoo says.

For Adupong, an increase in demand for locally packaged foods translates to
real-time growth in the economy, job creation and the path to economic
freedom for families.

 

—Howwemadeitinafrica

 

 


 


 


 

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