Women in Business: Affiong Williams

Affiong Williams is the CEO/ Founder of Reelfruit, a topmost fruit processing, packaging and marketing company in Nigeria. The company, founded in 2012, retails a range of dried fruit and nut snacks through a variety of channels including over 450 Supermarkets, Airlines, Schools, Hotels, and concluding export sales through Amazon.com. Reelfruit is an award-winning brand, winning international Women In Business Competition in the Netherlands. Affiong is passionate about agribusiness and looking at innovative, market-driven solutions to add value to local produce given Nigeria’s unique agricultural landscape.

She established a complex supply chain in 4 countries (Ghana, Gambia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria) to achieve year-round availability of products, a key competitive advantage. Reelfruit is a registered and active member of the Nigeria Export Promotion Council.

Affiong has managed several mid-sized export sales to Belgium, Switzerland, and the US and Canada, and also intra-africa trade to Gambia and Senegal.

She leads a large team of staff members, as well as 4 external consultants, even as she managed a pilot farm project training 45 women in Mango Farming in Kaduna.

As part of a business model, Affiong has gained and has had experiences with several horticultural and commodity mapping studies that have both been backed by donors such as IDH and USAID NEXXT, as well as company-funded research studies.

She has also advised the Lagos State Government on their approach to investing in SMES in order to achieve maximum job creation.

Through her entrepreneurial journey, she has been invited to countless fora on agribusiness, investment and trade.

“I’m very internally motivated, so I’m quite a driven person. It’s in my nature to finish the things I start, and it’s in my nature to do hard things. So I think I’ve drawn from my inner strength to keep going and say ‘I can finish what I started’. and see it through. But, to be honest, when all that fails, because obviously, it’s a finite resource, I look at people’s lives I’ve changed.” She said.

Affiong Williams obtained a post graduate diploma in Business Administration from Wits Business School, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2018, she also participated in the Stanford SEED Transformation ProgramStanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies. She worked for 4 years for Endeavor Global, a global non-profit which catalyzes economic development by supporting small to medium enterprises in developing markets. Affiong is passionate in unearthing the job and wealth creation potential of agribusiness and global trade.

After four years of working at Endeavor, she started to pursue the idea of starting a business. She knew that she wanted to come back to Nigeria to do that. Affiong looked at a couple of criteria to decide which industry she wanted to enter. “Job creation was my number one criteria, so I really wanted to build a business in an industry that had huge job creation potential. So, I picked agriculture and agribusiness.” Williams narrated.

Affiong is passionate about entrepreneurship, agriculture and politics and is an avid runner, completing over 15 marathons, raising funds for charity in the process.

She believes that before you get into any industry, you must carry out research on that industry. She says “If possible, I would advise every aspiring entrepreneur to volunteer for a while in the particular industry he/she is interested in before venturing into the business. The amount of learning would be priceless.” She said.

On financing, she admits that, that will always be an issue, as she doubts any entrepreneur always has all the money needed at a particular time. “I think money follows good businesses and good ideas. One should always start with what they have, show progress, and people will be attracted. No one will appreciate the excuse that money has stopped you from starting at all. Resourcefulness is a trait every entrepreneur must have” Williams advised.