Kenya’s highlands grow some of the best vegetables on the continent. Getting them to a Nairobi supermarket shelf in good condition — sorted, frozen, packaged, and consistently supplied — is a different problem entirely.

Smallholder farmers grow African leafy vegetables, legumes, and other produce with no reliable processor to buy from them at a fair price. The formal retail market wants consistency. The farmers need a guaranteed buyer. Between them sits the same gap that exists across Sub-Saharan Africa: a missing middle of processing and cold chain infrastructure.

Florence Mogere built Nyota Limited from the Ngong Hills to solve both sides of that problem.

She created two brands: Frozen Isle for frozen vegetables, beans, and chapati, and Ntamu for sauces and tomato-based products. Both aggregated from smallholder farmers, processed at her factory, and sold into formal retail across Nairobi — Naivas, Carrefour, and Marketways.

Africa Eats invested in the company and installed a 25KW solar array on the factory roof — giving a facility in a rural region reliable, around-the-clock electricity that the grid could not guarantee.

Nyota’s team is 97% women

Nyota processes and distributes frozen vegetables, beans, chapati, tomato sauces, and other food products under the Frozen Isle and Ntamu brands.

It aggregates from over 500 smallholder farmers — the majority of them women — across Kenya’s highland farming regions, processes at its Ngong Hills facility, and sells through the major Nairobi supermarket chains and other formal retail outlets.