Across Africa, a significant share of food is lost after harvest, not because it is not needed, but because it is not preserved. At the same time, millions of women remain excluded from value-addition opportunities that could transform household income, nutrition, and local economies.

This is the gap that AFC Ambassador Linda Kudakwashe Manyeza is closing.

As the Founding Director of Food Masters Africa, she is converting off-spec and surplus fruits and vegetables into nutritious dried products while equipping women across Southern Africa with the skills, tools, and market readiness to build their own agro-processing enterprises.

The Food Systems Challenge

Post-harvest losses continue to limit the availability, affordability, and accessibility of nutritious food across the continent. For smallholder farmers and informal markets, this loss represents not just wasted produce but lost income, lost jobs, and reduced resilience.

At the same time, agro-processing remains largely inaccessible to rural and peri-urban women due to:

• high equipment costs
• limited technical skills
• weak market linkages

Food preservation sits at the intersection of these challenges.

The Business Model: Turning Losses into Enterprises

Through Food Masters Africa, Linda has built a decentralised, climate-smart processing model powered by:

• sun drying
• solar drying
• electric dehydration

This approach:

• extends shelf life of perishable produce
• reduces food waste
• improves year-round food availability
• creates low-barrier entry points into agro-processing

Since 2023, the enterprise has trained over 1,000 people, most of them women and youth.

In 2025 alone:

• 305 participants were trained
• impact expanded across South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia

But the true measure of success is not training, it is enterprise creation.

Enterprise Creation in Action

The model is already translating into new businesses:

• A trained participant in Zimbabwe is completing a commercial solar drying tunnel
• A group of 12 women from the diaspora are establishing a fruit and vegetable dehydration company
• Multiple trainees are producing and selling dried products at small scale

A strategic partnership that enables participants to access affordable drying racks has removed one of the biggest barriers to entry, allowing women to move from skills acquisition to income generation immediately.

Food Masters Africa has also been appointed the sole distributor of the Zed food-waste water extraction machine in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa, thereby strengthening its position within the circular food economy.

The AFC Accelerator Effect: From Enterprise to Ecosystem Leadership

Linda’s journey reflects the AFC approach to agribusiness acceleration, moving beyond business support to value-chain leadership.

As Value Chain Ambassador – Agro-processing within

AFC, she has:

• Supported on-ground delivery for BRACE learning visits
• connected the AFC team to strategic partners in South Africa
• mentored emerging processors
• strengthened ecosystem collaboration

This demonstrates how AFC members evolve into multipliers of impact, enabling program delivery, market linkages, and knowledge transfer across borders.

The Power of the Network

AFC’s role is to identify, strengthen, and position entrepreneurs like Linda not only to grow their businesses but to lead transformation across the value chain.

Changemakers like Linda Kudakwashe Manyeza show what is possible when the right businesses are accelerated and connected.

Are you an agribusiness ready to grow and scale?
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