Her Excellency Dr Fatima Maada Bio, First Lady of Sierra Leone and President of the Organisation of African First Ladies for Development (OAFLAD), today formally opened a Sierra Leonean-owned Afro-food processing facility in South East London, describing the enterprise as an example of women’s entrepreneurship, diaspora-led investment and Sierra Leone’s agricultural potential.
The First Lady arrived in the United Kingdom that day from Rome. She went straight from the airport to open Khadie Afro Foods, a company founded and run by Sierra Leonean entrepreneur Khadie Dumbuya Alabi, also known as Khadie Fresh, and her husband, Femi Alabi. The opening took place at the firm’s address, 36 Raymouth Road, SE16 2DB.
Khadie Afro Foods is a major Sierra Leonean-owned African food business in the UK, operating since 2013. The company imports, processes, packages, retails, and wholesales African vegetables and food products. It imports large quantities of produce from Sierra Leone, Togo, Cameroon and Nigeria, processing popular West African leaves and vegetables such as cassava leaf, ugu, krain-krain, potato leaf, waterleaf, afang and ewedu.
Khadie Afro Foods has a business model that utilises agricultural produce “right from farm to supermarket”. The company prepares the products at source and arranges transportation to Britain, where they are washed, ground, processed and packaged before distribution to consumers and businesses in the UK market. Mrs Alabi has also formalised her company’s presence in Sierra Leone, registering it in 2018 and keeping it active in Goderich and Lungi, strengthening commercial links between Sierra Leonean agricultural producers and the UK’s African food market.
Mrs Alabi welcomed the First Lady and thanked her for the visit, while commending Dr Bio’s work in promoting the interests of women and girls in Sierra Leone and around the world. For her part, the First Lady commended Mrs Alabi for establishing an “impressive enterprise” while maintaining strong economic ties with her home country. She encouraged her to expand her business further to create more opportunities for others.
Dr Bio said the venture is proof of President Julius Maada Bio’s Feed Salone agenda, which aims to strengthen agricultural production and create markets for Sierra Leonean produce. She said the work they are doing, both here in the UK and back home in Sierra Leone, reflects the vision of His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio’s Feed Salone agenda, citing the enterprise as a practical example of how diaspora investment can help national food systems and livelihoods.
The inauguration also highlighted Sierra Leone’s religious tolerance, as Reverend Winston Webber of the United Methodist Church, Tower Bridge and Imam Sheikh Baimba Ibrahim Conteh of the North Brixton Islamic Cultural Centre dedicated the premises together.
The First Lady’s visit to Khadie Afro Foods comes ahead of her scheduled appearance this evening at the inauguration of the Sierra Leone People’s Party UK & Ireland Regional Executive. For Mrs Alabi, the ceremony was just another milestone in a business journey spanning more than a decade; for Sierra Leone, it showed how diaspora entrepreneurship can connect opportunity abroad to development at home by providing produce “from farm to factory, and ultimately from farm to supermarket.”
