Affiong Williams

Affiong Williams studied Physiology and Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, originally intending to pursue medical school, before earning a postgraduate diploma in Business Management from the same institution's business school. She spent four years at Endeavor South Africa, an organisation supporting high-growth entrepreneurs, where she analysed business models and scaling potential for emerging companies.

In 2012, Williams left her career in South Africa and returned to Nigeria with roughly $8,000 in savings to found ReelFruit, a company producing and packaging dried fruit and nut snacks, working initially out of her flat in Surulere, Lagos. For its first five years, ReelFruit relied on third-party producers as far as Ghana while she deliberately focused her limited resources on building the brand rather than manufacturing capacity.

ReelFruit has since become Nigeria's largest dried fruit processing company, retailing through more than 700 stores, airlines, schools and hotels, and exporting to the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Belgium and Saudi Arabia via Amazon.com — the first Nigerian company to achieve this. The business established a supply chain spanning Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Ivory Coast, and trains rural women in Kaduna to grow export-grade mangoes, employing over 80 staff across three regional offices.