Strengthening Women. Creating Value. 
Securing Nutrition.

The efforts of Irene Etyang significantly enhance nutritional health and food security for marginalized women smallholder farmers and communities in Kenya. Growing up in Teso - a region renowned for groundnut and millet farming but afflicted by poverty and gender inequality - Irene is intimately familiar with the systemic challenges that rural women face. Farmers are often at the mercy of middlemen who offer low prices, while climate change and rising input costs exacerbate financial pressures on farming families. In response to these challenges, Irene founded MAMLO FOODS, a women-led social enterprise that employs an innovative Micro-Factory Model. This decentralized approach positions peanut processing units closer to farming communities, enabling on-site value addition, minimizing post-harvest losses, and boosting incomes by three times for women farmers. This model creates a sustainable food system that enhances access to nutritious food while empowering local economies.

Irene’s impact is rooted in over 12 years of iterative, evidence-based work - starting as a volunteer at World Vision’s Angurai Area Development Program after earning her degree in Food Science and Technology from the University of Nairobi in 2012. She trained over 37,000 rural women in nutrition and the Empowered Worldview concept, fostering self-reliance and community transformation. After three years of dedicated service, Irene launched a small business focused on adding value to millet and peanuts. She developed a unique millet meal bar that received global recognition in SPORE, a magazine by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), for its potential to alleviate rural poverty and improve nutritional outcomes. This meal bar also secured an Open Innovation Challenge award hosted by UK Innovate and Unilever Kenya. Proceeds from her products supported a school feeding initiative in five schools, utilizing finger millet and peanuts sourced from rural women farmers. As demand grew for her products, Irene expanded into peanut butter production. In 2023, she officially launched the Micro-Factory Model, which has already scaled from an initial cohort of 10 women farmers to over 550 farmers of all genders. These farmers, trained in good agricultural practices and post-harvest handling, have tripled their incomes, while communities gain enhanced access to affordable and nutritious food options. 

Irene is a Mulago Foundation Fellow, a Leaders in Innovation Fellow (Royal Academy of Engineering, London), a Meaningful Business 100 Awardee, and has won the Arrell Global Food Innovation Award.

What skill did you have to develop as a founder that really challenged you, and how did you manage to grow into it?

One of the most challenging skills I had to develop as a founder was learning to think and lead on a scale. I started my journey as a food scientist and community practitioner, working closely with rural women farmers in Teso, Western Kenya. My instinct was always to solve problems in one community at a time, training farmers, developing products, and supporting livelihoods directly. While this work created a meaningful impact, I realized that if I truly wanted to transform the peanut value chain and address systemic poverty among rural women farmers, I needed to think beyond small projects and design solutions that could scale sustainably. This shift required me to develop new skills in systems thinking, strategic planning, and building partnerships. I had to move from being the person who solved every problem to building structures, models, and teams that could carry the mission forward. One experience that significantly helped me develop this mindset was a leadership retreat in the Atlas Mountains in Marrakech in 2024. It challenged me to rethink the scale of the problems we are trying to solve and the ambition required to address them. That experience pushed me to refine the Micro-Factory Model, which allows us to decentralize processing and create value closer to farming communities while still building a scalable enterprise. Today, I continue to grow into this role by surrounding myself with mentors, learning from global networks, and constantly refining how we build systems that empower communities, not just serve them.

Which other parts of the agricultural sector do you think are ready for innovation through your Micro-Factory Model?

Several agricultural value chains are well-positioned to benefit from the Micro-Factory Model, particularly those involving crops where smallholder farmers produce in large quantities but capture very little value beyond the farm gate. Indigenous grains such as millet and sorghum present a strong opportunity. These climate-resilient crops are widely grown across Africa yet are often sold raw. Localized processing can convert them into nutrient-dense flours, ready-to-eat snacks, and ingredients for school feeding programs, improving both farmer incomes and community nutrition. Oilseed crops like sesame and sunflower are also well suited for the model. Decentralized processing allows farming communities to produce high-quality edible oils and utilize by-products such as seed cake for animal feed, creating multiple income streams while reducing post-harvest losses.

The model can further support legumes such as cowpeas and pigeon peas, which are key plant-based protein sources in many African diets. Community-level processing can transform them into fortified flours, snacks, and complementary foods that improve access to affordable nutrition. In addition, high-value, nutrient-dense crops such as orange-fleshed sweet potatoes and moringa offer significant potential. Sweet potatoes can be processed into vitamin A-rich flours and food ingredients used in nutrition programs, while moringa can be transformed into powders and supplements that are increasingly in demand in both local and international markets. By bringing value addition closer to where crops are grown, the Micro-Factory Model helps farmers move beyond selling raw commodities. It enables communities to capture greater economic value, reduce waste, strengthen rural economies, and build more resilient, nutrition-driven food systems. 

What long-term transformation do you envision for the Teso region in the next 10 to 15 years?

In the next 10 to 15 years, I envision the Teso region, both in Kenya and Uganda, undergoing a profound transformation from a historically marginalized indigenous community to a thriving hub of agricultural innovation, prosperity, and dignity. For generations, Teso has been rich in agricultural potential, producing crops like peanuts and millet that nourish millions. Yet the community itself has remained economically marginalized. Farmers, especially women, have long been excluded from the most valuable parts of the food system, often forced to sell their harvests to middlemen at very low prices. As a result, the wealth generated from Teso’s land and labor has consistently flowed out of the region, leaving farming families trapped in cycles of poverty.

My vision is to reverse that pattern. Over the next decade, I see Teso becoming a center of decentralized value addition, powered by networks of community-based micro-factories that process crops close to where they are grown. Instead of exporting raw commodities, the region will produce high-quality, value-added foods that serve both national and international markets. This shift would fundamentally change who benefits from agriculture. Women farmers, who form the backbone of the agricultural workforce, would move from being price takers to value creators. Rural youth would see real opportunity in agriculture, not as a last resort but as a pathway to entrepreneurship, innovation, and employment.

Beyond economic growth, the deeper transformation is about restoring agency to an indigenous community that has long been overlooked. Teso has the knowledge, the land, and the farming heritage to lead in building resilient food systems. With the right infrastructure and models like the Micro-Factory approach, the region can retain more of its value, strengthen local economies, improve nutrition, and demonstrate what inclusive rural development truly looks like. I believe Teso can become a continental example of how marginalized indigenous communities can reclaim their agricultural wealth and shape their own economic future, turning agriculture from a story of extraction into one of shared prosperity

How do you hope your work will influence future generations, especially young girls in rural areas?

I hope my work helps rewrite the story what many young girls in rural communities believe about themselves. In many marginalized rural areas like Teso, girls are often raised to see few possibilities beyond subsistence farming, early marriage, or leaving their communities in search of opportunity elsewhere. Leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship are rarely presented as paths available to them, especially within agriculture. I want my work to challenge and change that narrative.

Through MAMLO FOODS, I want young girls to see that the communities they come from, often dismissed as poor or remote, can be places where powerful innovation begins. Agriculture is not just labor in the field; it is science, technology, entrepreneurship, and systems change. A girl from a small rural village can grow up to design new food systems, build companies, lead global conversations on nutrition and climate resilience, and create opportunities for thousands of others.

I also hope they see that they do not have to abandon their communities to succeed. The future of Africa’s food systems will be shaped by leaders who understand rural realities and are bold enough to transform them. When girls from these communities move into leadership, they bring insight, resilience, and a deep sense of responsibility to the people they represent. If the next generation of girls in rural and indigenous communities grows up believing that they are not just participants in agriculture but innovators, founders, and architects of their region’s prosperity, the impact of this work will extend far beyond MAMLO FOODS. It will create a generation of leaders who transform the very systems that once limited them.