Entrepreneurship Zone: 19 September 2025: Nigeria: Persistence pays off for dried fruit entrepreneur

Fri Sep 19 10:55:15 CAT 2025

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Entrepreneurship Zone: 19 September  2025: Nigeria: Persistence pays off for dried fruit entrepreneur

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Affiong Williams, CEO of Nigeria-based dried fruit snacks producer ReelFruit

Interview with Affiong Williams
FOUNDER, REELFRUIT

Lives in: Lagos, Nigeria

  _____  

ReelFruit, founded by Affiong Williams, has grown from small beginnings to supplying both local retailers and overseas buyers.

By the late 2010s, Affiong Williams was ready to pull the plug on her Nigerian dried fruit and snacks company, ReelFruit, which she had been building since 2012. It wasn’t because the business was failing – it had been growing year after year. But Williams was losing enthusiasm as she struggled to raise the capital needed to build a large-scale factory, the kind of facility she had envisioned from the beginning.

Investors she pitched to often doubted there was sufficient demand for the company’s products. What they didn’t grasp is that in her line of business, demand follows supply. Large international buyers would only place orders once they were sure the company could supply in big enough quantities. And with the high costs of pursuing global clients – attending trade shows, hiring brokers, and so on – it made little sense to invest in outreach if ReelFruit couldn’t fulfil large orders.

“Every end-of-year strategy plan was hinged on us getting this money to run our factory. And year after year it wouldn’t happen,” Williams recalls. “I was like, okay, this is not because I’m not good at my job. It’s just because I’m in a tough market and I was ready to walk away.”

She gave herself one final year to secure the funds.

Not long after, an investment firm she had been in contact with for a long time returned with good news: they were finally ready to move forward. In 2021, ReelFruit closed a $3 million investment.

Three years later, the company inaugurated a large factory in the industrial city of Abeokuta, realising a goal Williams had pursued for more than a decade.

Introducing Nigerians to dried fruit

In 2012, after living abroad for more than a decade, Williams returned to Nigeria and began testing the dried fruit snack market by importing products from South Africa, repackaging them, and selling to early customers.

Encouraged by the response, she decided to take things a step further. But building her own factory was not an option as she didn’t have the capital. Instead, she turned to an established dried fruit company in nearby Ghana, which agreed to sell her dried mango and pineapple.

At the start, Williams packaged everything herself from her apartment. As demand grew, she rented her own space. Her first team was small: two people handled the packing, two focused on sales, and one worked as a driver.

At the time, modern retail in Nigeria was just beginning to take off, with new supermarket chains and malls opening across the country, even though informal retail still dominated. Williams was determined to see her products on those shelves.

ReelFruit’s first breakthrough came in 2013, when its products were listed at Prince Ebeano, a popular Lagos supermarket.

Williams and her sales team went on to target other grocery retailers and pharmacies. But it was a hard slog, as most people weren’t familiar with the products. “People didn’t know what it meant to eat dried fruit over fresh fruit,” she recalls.

By speaking directly with consumers and retailers, the team learnt which flavours and formats resonated. In response, ReelFruit introduced a fruit-and-nut mix, followed later by coconut flakes and coconut chips.

Throughout its early years, ReelFruit kept raising small amounts of capital – usually less than $100,000 at a time – for specific purposes such as launching a new product or entering a new market.

Even so, her goal was always to secure substantial investment for a factory. Over the years, she estimates she put together around 200 pitch decks.

Employees at ReelFruit’s new factory.

The challenge of sourcing fruit

In 2021, Williams’s persistence paid off. She landed $3 million in funding from private equity investors Alitheia IDF, Samata Capital, and Flying Doctor Healthcare Investment Company. The capital was allocated towards building a new factory and expanding sales into the US and other international markets.

By 2024, ReelFruit’s new factory was complete. But this milestone brought a new challenge: securing enough fruit to keep it running. Williams says raw material supply has become the most difficult part of the business. She highlights a paradox in Nigeria’s fruit industry: much fruit goes to waste because farmers can’t sell it, yet sourcing large volumes remains surprisingly difficult.

ReelFruit sources its fruit mainly from small-scale farmers, working through aggregators who pool produce from numerous smallholders.

But working with small-scale farmers is complicated. ReelFruit can’t simply buy any mango or pineapple; the fruit must meet strict specifications. Aggregators alone can’t guarantee this, which is why the company builds direct relationships with farmers and takes a hands-on role in the fields.

To enforce standards, ReelFruit employs field agents who work directly with growers. They ensure fruit meets the company’s requirements and verify that farmers avoid pesticides banned in the European market. At times, ReelFruit even hires harvesters to pick the fruit.

Tapping into international markets

Williams has long viewed international markets as a major opportunity for ReelFruit. With the opening of its new factory and greater production capacity, that ambition has begun to materialise. The company has signed agreements with two distributors in Europe and a large retail group in the United States, along with other export deals. In addition to its branded packaged snacks, it now supplies bulk produce for both retail and industrial buyers, opening up new channels overseas.

By exporting, Williams explains, Nigerian companies can protect themselves against the weakness of the naira, the country’s local currency. Between mid-2023 and mid-2025, the naira lost about half its value against the US dollar. “Many Nigerian companies have input costs in dollars, either directly or indirectly. So, the inflationary impact of the devaluing naira is hedged when you [export and] earn dollars,” she says.

With annual inflation climbing to 25% in 2023 and 33% in 2024, Nigerians’ spending power has been sharply eroded. Against this backdrop, Williams stresses the importance of targeting markets with higher disposable incomes. Even a modest foothold in a dollar-paying market, she says, can help businesses weather Nigeria’s difficult economic climate.

Backing ‘Made in Nigeria’

Despite the country’s current economic headwinds, Williams remains positive about the Nigerian consumer. She sees problems such as inflation and a weak currency as short-term challenges and points to the demographic fundamentals: a population of more than 230 million with an average age of about 19, which she believes still supports building businesses that serve mass demand.

Williams also sees significant scope to boost manufacturing in Africa. With higher global shipping costs, importing finished goods into the continent has become more expensive, strengthening the case for local production – especially in categories with established demand such as food and clothing. At the same time, rising manufacturing costs in countries like China could open space for African producers to supply the global market.

When her factory opened in 2024, Williams summed up this conviction in a LinkedIn post: “This factory isn’t just a structure of bricks and mortar. It embodies my long-term unwavering belief in Nigeria’s agricultural and manufacturing opportunity. We are going to process our range [of] dried fruits at scale, to serve customers across the country, as well as sell ‘Made in Nigeria’ to the rest of the world, creating several hundred jobs, and positively impacting farmers at scale. It is my hope that our factory stands as a positive symbol in the business landscape of Nigeria for generations to come.”

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