At 37, Millicent Okumu stands out as one of the women reshaping Kenya’s agribusiness landscape.
As co-founder and chief executive officer of Agriflex Limited, Ms Okumu is building a digitally enabled agriculture ecosystem designed to solve some of the challenges facing smallholder farmers.
Raised in Homa Bay County, Ms Okumu grew up around farming, watching her father invest in seeds and livestock inputs. After he passed away when she had just completed Form Four, she took up the responsibility of helping her family – and later neighbours, many of them widows – access seeds for planting.
She studied economics and sociology at Egerton University and built a strong career in logistics and operations before agriculture “caught up” with her. This “catching up” started when she joined iProcure, an agricultural supply chain platform, in 2017.
"What led to co-founding Agriflex are two things. First is the personal experience back from my area, where lack of access for smallholder farmers is a huge problem. And on top of that lack of access, there’s just a lack of knowledge."
She rose to become the group chief operations officer, giving her a front-row view of the gaps in Africa’s agricultural systems and the confidence to build a solution. That was through starting Agriflex.
“What led to co-founding Agriflex are two things. First is the personal experience back from my area, where lack of access for smallholder farmers is a huge problem. And on top of that lack of access, there’s just a lack of knowledge,” she says.
Through Agriflex, a for-profit company she started in 2023, exiting iProcure, Ms Okumu has helped create a platform that connects farmers and agro-dealers to certified and affordable farm inputs, training, advisory services, drone-powered precision farming and market opportunities.
In just under three years, she says, the company has impacted more than 400,000 smallholder farmers and more than 2,300 agro-dealers.
Her story has attracted local and global recognition.
-Elvis Ondieki