Ogbon Eyitayo Azaratou

There is a quiet revolution happening in the kitchens of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou, and Porto-Novo, and it begins with a dehydrator.

Yam couscous and pre-cooked white beans may not sound like the raw material of business transformation, but in West African households where these staples are cherished precisely because of the hours they demand on the stove, Ogbon Eyitayo Azaratou had identified something real: a nutritional treasure and a domestic burden occupying the same space. MORADYS was her answer, pre-cooked, shelf-stable versions of foods that families already loved, packaged in eco-friendly cardboard, ready in a fraction of the time.

Before the WAYA award, MORADYS was a one-product operation. Yam couscous, 600 units a month, and a founder who knew exactly what she needed to grow but could not yet afford it. The prize money after winning Regional Rising Star for West Africa unlocked the critical piece: a larger dehydrator that allowed Ogbon to resume production of pre-cooked pulses, a line that had existed in her plans but not yet in her factory. Within the reporting period, the Nanfi range had grown from one product to three: yam couscous, yam flour, and pre-cooked white beans. Monthly production capacity had jumped from 600 to 2,000 units, a 333% increase. Two supermarkets and 236 new households had come on as customers across three cities, expanding the customer base by 45.5%. Annual revenue, which had sat at USD 9,000, was projected to reach USD 24,000 by year end.

Behind those numbers was a supply chain that was also growing. MORADYS had sourced raw materials from 52 farmers before the award. By the one-year mark, that number had risen to 64, and the expanded production capacity meant buying three times as much from them. More than 62% of those farmers were women. A partnership with a Nigerian company to manufacture cardboard packaging had further strengthened the supply side.

The year also opened unexpected doors. At the UN Food Systems Summit in Addis Ababa, where WAYA had invited Ogbon to participate, she attended a Youth Preparatory Workshop, engaged with the Kampala Declaration, and took part in a dialogue between young African agricultural entrepreneurs and sitting heads of state. It was, by any measure, a long way from a production floor in Abomey-Calavi. She came back with more than exposure. At the summit she met Fily Keita, a young entrepreneur from Mali, and the two struck a cross-border distribution agreement: Fily would represent MORADYS products in Mali, while Ogbon would represent hers in Benin. A partnership born in a corridor in Addis Ababa, with the potential to extend both women’s reach across the region.

Back home, MORADYS was selected by the SANPRENEURS project at the University of Abomey-Calavi, funded by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, as a producer of nutritious foods, bringing with it training in economic modeling, market access, food safety, and quality assurance. Ogbon was also mentoring four recent Food Technology Engineering graduates, three of them women, helping them navigate the early steps of starting their own animal feed businesses.

The prize money had not covered everything on her expansion list, she was candid about that, still needing an additional USD 20,000 to complete the equipment she had planned for. But what it had done was restart a production line, triple a farmer supply base, and give a founder whose work had gone largely unseen the validation that, as she put it plainly, her work, however small, had an impact.

From one product to three. From 52 farmers to 64. From Benin to Mali, and from a local factory to a room full of African heads of state. By the one-year mark, MORADYS was a different business than it had been, and Ogbon Eyitayo Azaratou was a different kind of leader.