When Ikenna Nzewi (Yale ’17), Uzoma Ayogu (Duke ’17), and Isaiah Udotong (MIT ’17) returned to Nigeria in 2017, they weren’t chasing headlines. They were chasing a solution. One that would fix a long-ignored gap in the country’s most valuable but inefficient supply chain — palm oil.
Despite being home to the fifth-largest palm oil reserves in the world, Nigeria’s production processes had remained stuck in the past. Most smallholder farmers still cracked palm nuts by hand or with rocks. It was slow, wasteful, and financially unrewarding.
Releaf began as a marketplace idea. But once on the ground, the founders quickly realized the real issue wasn’t market access — it was the absence of modern processing infrastructure.
From marketplace idea to engineering hardware
In 2019, they pivoted. The team built Kraken, a portable, patent-pending machine that could de-shell palm nuts with industrial-grade precision — over 95% purity — and process hundreds of tons per week.
To complement Kraken, they launched SALT, a sourcing and logistics software platform that connected thousands of smallholder farmers to Releaf’s network, giving them access to real-time pricing, inputs, financing, and guaranteed demand.
That shift unlocked a new model: one that placed processing power closer to farmers, creating value at the source and reducing post-harvest losses that previously drained the system.
“Our food supply chains are currently not set up…”
In an interview with FoodNavigator, co-founder and CTO Uzoma Ayogu explained the bigger picture:
“Our food supply chains are currently not set up to process food efficiently and affordably. The absence of efficient tools and infrastructure is why our food systems are not working as well as they can. Our mission at Releaf is to bring processing capacity closer to farmers.” That clarity helped Releaf scale faster and more sustainably not just as an agritech company, but as a builder of agro-industrial infrastructure.
The bet investors couldn’t ignore
In 2021, Releaf raised a $4.2 million seed round, backed by Samurai Incubate, Future Africa, Consonance, and grants from USAID and CFYE. Two years later, they closed another $3.3 million pre-Series A, led by Samurai and Bain Capital’s Stephen Pagliuca, to expand their model across Nigeria’s oil palm belt.
The capital funded Kraken II (a smaller, even more mobile version of their machine), and SITE, a geospatial tool that helps Releaf determine the most efficient factory locations based on crop density and logistics access.
The climate-tech evolution
By 2025, Releaf has onboarded 2,000+ smallholder farmers, processed 10,000+ tons of palm nuts, and sustained 25% month-over-month revenue growth. But perhaps its most transformative move came in 2024 — the launch of Nigeria’s first industrial biochar facility.
Using waste from palm-kernel shells, the plant converts agricultural byproducts into biochar — a carbon-rich soil enhancer that improves crop yields by up to 23% and locks carbon into the ground for decades. The move attracted climate-aligned backers like Breakthrough Energy, AirMiners, and Angaza Capital.
Releaf now sits at the frontier of African climate-smart agriculture, using carbon removal and regenerative practices as a competitive advantage, not just a sustainability add-on.
Building for long-term impact
What Releaf has achieved is rare in Africa’s startup landscape. They’ve merged hardware innovation, software logistics, and climate intelligence into one scalable engine — turning smallholder farmers into essential partners in a modern industrial supply chain.
They didn’t build a product and find a market — they built the market itself. One factory. One farmer. One data point at a time.
