Nigeria: With tomato paste, Harvard graduates hope to empower farmers

Although Nigeria leads Africa in oil exports, two recent Harvard graduates are trying to ramp up the West African country’s production of a different natural resource—tomato paste.

“It was a pipe dream I’ve had since 2008,” said Mira A. Mehta, a Business School graduate who co-founded the startup “Tomato Jos” with School of Public Health alumnus Shane F. Kiernan earlier this year. The company, a for-profit social enterprise, aims to build up a tomato paste industry in Nigeria by educating local tomato farmers about agricultural techniques and supplying them with seeds and fertilizers. The name Tomato Jos itself means “cute girl” in Nigerian slang, a play on the fact that the tomatoes in the Nigerian city Jos are known to be very sweet and juicy.

Mehta said the inspiration for the startup came from the four years she spent living in Nigeria before attending HBS. “We would pass miles and miles of tomato fields, and the tomatoes were just rotting on the side of the road,” Mehta said. “It’s a striking image.”

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