In the heart of Africa’s peanut belt, Irene Etyang is building opportunities from the ground up and empowering local farmers.

The business, MAMLO FOODS, adopted an innovative business model that is impacting hundreds of smallholder, women-owned peanut farms in the area. One of the business’s core innovations, known as a micro-factory, focuses on bolstering the local rural economy through agriculture.

Etyang said this approach ensures value remains with farmers, rather than leaving rural areas through raw commodity trade.

“Instead of farmers selling raw peanuts that are processed far away, we localize processing within farming communities,” Etyang said. “By connecting the farmers and the factory, farmers can retain more of the profits. Globally, the peanut industry is worth more than $90 billion, but smallholder farmers who grow the peanuts receive only a small portion of that.”

Under this business model, MAMLO also works with 100% women-led supply networks, according to its website.  The name, MAMLO, is a portmanteau of the Swahili terms mama and mlo, meaning mother and food.

“In just over two years, our work has expanded to support more than 500 smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, while also producing and selling peanut butter products in the market,” Etyang said.

Etyang, who studied Food Science and Technology at the University of Nairobi, said she was intentional about sharing her knowledge.

“From early in my career, I felt strongly that the knowledge of food science should not remain only in laboratories of factories,” she said. “It should serve communities.”

Over time, Etyang has invested in her professional development, enabling her to continue growing the business.

One opportunity was the Mandela Washington Fellowship, where Etyang connected with Oklahoma State University and Lauren Cline, agricultural leadership assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Education, Communications and Leadership and OSU Extension agricultural leadership specialist.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by the International Research and Exchange Board.

The fellowship, which was led each summer between 2017 and 2019 at OSU, invited 25 fellows from Sub-Saharan African countries to study at the university for six weeks, said Craig Edwards, agricultural education professor in the Department of Agricultural Education, Communications and Leadership.

A pillar of the program is to promote collaborative learning in a globalized agricultural society.

“People have a lot more in common than they have different,” Edwards said. “They want themselves and their families to be safe. They want to make a good living, but you can find that everywhere. You find it in Uganda, you find it in north Texas, and you find it in Stillwater, Oklahoma.”

Etyang said during her time as a fellow in the program, she was impressed by the Ferguson College of Agriculture’s integration of the land-grant mission.

“I saw how research and Extension programs work closely with farmers to solve real-world agricultural challenges,” Etyang said.

Etyang was part of the 2019 cohort when she met Cline, who was involved at the time in the project as a doctoral student at OSU. She and Cline stayed in contact ever since, Cline said.

“Once fellows complete the Mandela Washington Fellowship program, they can apply for Reciprocal Exchange grants,” Cline said.

These Reciprocal Exchange grants allow for former fellows to bring individuals they met in the program to their home country to draw on their expertise, help address local needs, or work on community impact projects, Cline said.

When the most recent grant cycle opened, Etyang reached out to see if Cline would be interested in traveling to Kenya to work with MAMLO’s staff on leadership development, community engagement and product marketing.

“Let’s do it,” Cline remembered thinking at the time.

They received that grant, which allowed Cline to travel to Kenya for two weeks in November 2025.

She visited Kisumu, the company’s headquarters, and Amagoro, the site of the first micro-factory, to lead internal team training and facilitate Extension-type workshops for in-the-field training with farmers, Cline said. The grant also provided funding for community engagement events.

“Some things that we take for granted here in the states is our access to research and Extension and information from our agriculture-based universities,” Cline said.

Cline explained that while similar models for agricultural education and Extension exist in Kenya, resources are often limited.

“We were able to bring the peanut farmers together with a government ag agent to essentially have a daylong field observation,” Cline said.

The group led workshops and exchanged information with farmers on topics such as crop improvement and soil health, and discussed potential solutions to challenges some farmers were facing in the fields or throughout the growing season.

“Peanut farmers in Western Kenya face several significant challenges,” Etyang said.

Farmers often have limited access to improved seed varieties and rely on recycled seeds from previous harvests, battle climate change and unpredictable weather patterns, and experience significant post-harvest loss from a lack of drying and storage systems, Etyang added.

Cline, who holds teaching and Extension appointments, said this kind of global community engagement aligns directly with her work on personnel and program development, collaborative problem solving and adaptive leadership.

“I look at how we develop the people skills in the agricultural industry,” Cline said. “How can we be better critical thinkers? How do we look beyond the profitability of a decision and start to think about how our decisions impact communities and groups of people?”

That very question is at the heart of Etyang’s vision for MAMLO. Built on land her father gave her in the village where she grew up, her business model is centered on investing in the local community and revolutionizing the local food value chain.

“She is helping local farmers transition to growing peanuts—in Kenya they call them ground nuts—and giving them a direct market,” Cline said.  “That way, they’re not having to find that market on their own.”

Etyang ensures farmers get good, fair prices for their peanuts, which are then processed in the rural micro-factories, turning them into a value-added product, peanut butter, that is marketed and sold locally and across the region, Cline added.

“Irene is a food scientist by training, and so she’s very passionate about providing nutrient-rich food to people,” she said. “But doing it in a way that’s empowering to local farmers, specifically in Kenya, women farmers.”

Etyang said she grew up in a small Indigenous community in Western Kenya, where women worked on their farms to grow peanuts and millet.

“As a child, I watched women, including my mother, work tirelessly on their farms,” Etyang recalled.

“Despite their hard work, many families struggled financially because they had little control over how their crops were marketed,” she added.

Etyhang said she attended a leadership retreat in which she initially considered focusing her work on other crops, including millet, cassava, sweet potatoes and apiculture, or managing honey bees.

During that experience, she said, she was encouraged to focus on one area with the greatest impact.

Peanuts, she said, had “extraordinary potential” to make a tremendous impact with local farmers.

“Peanuts are nutrient-dense, widely grown by women farmers and have strong global demand,” Etyang said. “Yet the farmers producing them often remain excluded from the most profitable parts of the value chain.”

Etyang said that is why MAMLO prioritized a localized value-added product to drive community transformation.

“When peanuts are processed into products like peanut butter close to where they are grown, farmers capture far more value,” Etyang said.

On the front end, Etyang said, MAMLO also focuses on improving production practices, reducing post-harvest losses through innovations and technology like their solar-powered drying facility.

“Peanuts can take anywhere from six to seven days to dry before you can process them, but the solar-powered facility Irene built can be done in six to seven hours,” Cline said.

The turnaround time in these factories is quicker, which results in selling peanut butter and paying the farmers quicker, Cline said.

This matters in Kenya because it allows people to have cash in their hands right away to pay for school fees and other expenses for their family, Cline added.

“Irene is not only providing new jobs for people but also creating a lot of community change,” Cline said.

Cline’s visit through the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange allowed the partnership she formed with Etyang in 2019 to continue in a practical way, Etyang said.

“The goal of this exchange was to strengthen the leadership capacity of our internal team so that we can effectively support farmers,” Etyang said.

Together, they are developing educational resources, including a Farmer Training Toolkit to help build capacity for training female farmers and replicating the micro-factory model as MAMLO grows.

“What keeps me motivated is the resilience of the women farmers I work with every day,” Etyang said, adding the women continue to overcome obstacles, determined to create a better future for their families.

“Seeing their commitment reminds me that agriculture has the power to transform rural communities when farmers are supported with the right knowledge, tools and opportunities,” Etyang said.

Story by Jessi Dill | Cowboy Journal