ASA-WISHH’s newest video explores how strategic partner, Prosoya Kenya, has benefitted from WISHH’s USB-funded Mobilizing Entrepreneurs to Expand U.S. Soy Utilization in Developing and Emerging Markets Initiative. The company has a high-bar mission of bringing its nutritious and affordable foods—including livestock feeds and their new ready-to-eat porridge, UJILALA— to 70% of African countries by 2030.
Prosoya Kenya Innovation Manager Fridah Kaburu and her colleagues are examples of entrepreneurs who have participated in WISHH’s USB-funded Mobilizing Entrepreneurs to Expand U.S. Soy Utilization in Developing and Emerging Markets Initiative. Prosoya Kenya’s mission is to bring nutritious and affordable foods, including livestock feeds and UJILALA, their new ready-to-eat porridge, to 70% of African countries by 2030.
Within two years, Prosoya Kenya plans to work with 30,000 pig and dairy farmers through cooperatives and village groups. The entrepreneurial company’s focus on innovation and affordable nutritious soy-based foods and feeds made them an excellent strategic partner for ASA/WISHH to include in WISHH’s virtual training through the USB-funded initiative that works to compress the time for a new U.S. soybean market to go from emerging market entry to expansion market ready.
Craig Williams, a soybean grower who also serves on the Indiana Soybean Alliance Board of Directors and WISHH Program Committee, joined a virtual training session and appears in the video along with Purdue University College of Agriculture faculty members. Purdue Professor Maria I. Marshall and Professor Emeriti Joan Fulton are leading entrepreneurs through a 12-module curriculum designed by Purdue. The virtual training covers topics ranging from the challenging-but-important process of defining the target market for their soy-containing food or feed, pricing, distribution and logistics, and financing.
WISHH’s ability to offer such top-shelf training is attractive to entrepreneurs. In 2009, Prosoya Kenya’s founder Kaburu Muguika launched the company and has built the business on the principle of continuous learning. “If you spend a day without learning something new you would become obsolete,” he says.
As a result of in-depth research on food and feed ingredients, he had concluded that soy is special due to its protein profile that offers all essential amino acids to fortify human foods as well as livestock feeds. Therefore, soy is foundational to Prosoya Kenya and its high-social-impact agenda. “Our mission is to fight poverty, malnutrition and unemployment…. anything that touches that is our work,” says Kaburu.
WISHH’s USB-funded initiative attracts and mentors entrepreneurs who can invest in developing and emerging market soy enterprises, bringing new market sectors into the U.S. soy market pipeline. From CEOs to product innovation and market teams, WISHH is working with more than 50 employees of entrepreneurs in Asia, Latin America and Africa in the human food, livestock, and aquaculture feed sectors.