Social entrepreneur Mira Mehta is endeavoring
to turn the fortunes of poor tomato farmers in Nigeria
Parinaz Gandhi
Farmers in Northern Nigeria had lined the roads with tomatoes hoping to dry them because prices were abysmally low in 2008. Mira Mehta who was then working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Nigeria, coordinating with the US government’s Federal Ministry of Health HIV/AIDS Division, could not understand why this region that produces 65% of the tomatoes grown in West Africa was also the largest importer of tomato paste in the world. When analyzing this problem in depth, she conceived Tomato Jos (TJ) as a lucrative food processing business opportunity for herself and simultaneously sought to make tomato farming......