Sandra Letio

The name says something. Pelere, in the Acholi language of northern Uganda, means to process, to transform. It is an apt name for a company that takes one of the region’s most ancient agricultural resources, Nilotica shea, and works it from tree to finished product, from rural farm to urban shelf. Sandra Letio did not just build a business around that transformation. She built a whole value chain, and then set about proving that a woman from Gulu could run it all the way to the global market.

When Sandra was named 1st Runners Up for the WAYA Resilience and Inspirational Winner award, Pelere Group was already operating across two rural sites, Matugga in Wakiso District and Layibi in Gulu, with a team of 150, the majority of them women and youth. The award did not create her momentum. It amplified it.

The most tangible early move was the prize money itself, deployed with the precision of someone who had been waiting for exactly this kind of capital. USD 2,500 went toward machinery at the Matugga factory. USD 5,500 topped up the purchase of a distribution vehicle, a deceptively simple investment that addressed one of the most stubborn constraints in Ugandan agribusiness: getting product to market reliably, on time, at a cost that does not erode margins. A new warehouse was breaking ground in parallel.

But the headline development in that first period was a custom-designed machine built specifically for processing Nilotica shea fruit and other oilseeds, completed, containerized, and being shipped to the Gulu factory. Once installed, it would take Pelere’s production capacity from 10 tonnes per month to 10 tonnes per day. That is not incremental growth. That is a structural shift in what the business could become.

By the one-year mark, the machinery had arrived. Multiple 40-foot containers of equipment had been cleared and installed across Pelere’s factory operations, and the company’s focus had sharpened from domestic processing to export readiness. Revenue had grown by 15%, driven by improved customs clearance efficiency, expanded trade volumes, and stronger logistics partnerships. Sandra had developed fluency in the language of international trade, customs documentation, import/export compliance, UNBS standards, and was putting it to work navigating Pelere toward regional and then global markets. A spot on Alibaba formalized that global ambition.

Throughout both reporting periods, Pelere’s community roots held firm. By year one, operations in Gulu and Kampala had generated 30 new direct jobs in logistics, machinery operation, customs clearance, and production oversight, alongside 180 employment opportunities across the broader operation. Some 2,000 smallholder farmers were connected to the business, and 1,500 women and young entrepreneurs had received mentorship on business planning, financial management, and export processes. The company’s model of enabling women and youth to become independent distributors of Pelere’s shea and natural product lines meant that empowerment was not a program running alongside the business, it was baked into the commercial structure itself.

Sandra’s own profile tracked the company’s rising arc. She was invited to the Global Ministerial Conference in South Africa as a recognized agribusiness leader. She spoke at trade and women-in-business forums. She mentored young women entrepreneurs navigating the same obstacles she had faced. And through the FAO-IAFN Women-Led SMEs program, she worked with a mentor to reframe Pelere’s model, sharpen its systems, and think more strategically about what scaling actually required.

What this reveals is a leader who understood, from the beginning, that resilience is not just about surviving hard seasons. It is about building something strong enough to grow through them, and taking as many people with you as the structure can hold.