Development Consultant and Entrepreneur, Oluwayimika Angel Adelaja is Founder Fresh Direct Nigeria, an environmentally friendly, organic agricultural production and processing company that helps rural farmers cross across the urban market via agricultural technology.
Using stackable container farms, the company brings fresh premium organic produce closer to the home market via hydroponics and vertical farming within a shipping container, which helps Container Farms grow directly in urban areas without being stopped by land availability among other factors.
Former epidemiologist turned social entrepreneur, Adelaja founded Fresh Direct in 2014, after going through the hassle of securing land, access to technology, etc, she then decided to take on urban farming and has not looked back since. Through her passion, the entrepreneur merges science and business to build sustainability and profitability within the sector, thereby making agriculture cheaper, easy, and fun for young people. She also aims to empower the unemployed youths so these farmers in turn become employers of labor.
The innovative mind who in October 2015, emerged winner of The Venture, a competition for innovation and winner of the She Leads Africa(SLA) Accelerator 2016 is also Co-Founder and Executive Director We Farm Africa. Adelaja’s organic urban farms which use less water and land than traditional farming methods reportedly produce 15 times higher product yield.
Adelaja comes with a wealth of experience and has notably served in numerous high-profile positions such as Special Assistant to the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Poverty Alleviation and National Coordinator and Consultant to the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Wealth Creation.
She holds a BSc in Biology, Temple University and trained as an epidemiologist, Michigan State University.
