Blog Rooted in beans, rising in business: How a family in Goma is growing bean empire

by Napoleon Kajunju, Jean Claude Rubyogo, Bola Amoke Awotide, Lydie Mulonda, Paulin Njingulura, Julie Ntamwinja, Lucky Kalisya

onSeptember 15, 2025

Rooted in beans, a family in Goma turns a small idea into a thriving business. With support from B4WE, ABECHA is now boosting nutrition, creating jobs, and empowering women farmers across Eastern DRC.

In a city where food insecurity shadows daily life and opportunity feels just out of reach, Sadiki and his wife Huguette dared to see something different in a bean. Inside a crowded market of Goma, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where rice and maize dominate the stalls and household tables, beans have long been a quiet staple. But to the couple, founders of the agri-enterprise ABECHA, beans were not just food but potential.

What began as a modest idea to package locally grown beans in clean, consumer-friendly formats quickly turned into a mission.

“People buy rice in packages. They buy maize in packages. Why not beans?” Sadiki recalls. “We saw the gap and stepped in.” What followed later was not an overnight success, but a steady climb, and in 2023, everything changed.

An initiative becomes a turning point

That year, the couple joined the Beans for Women Empowerment (B4WE) initiative, an ambitious effort led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, through the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA), with support from the Global Affairs Canada (GAC).

Focused on strengthening bean value chains in Eastern DRC, particularly for women and youth, B4WE offered exactly what ABECHA needed: training in agribusiness management, bean handling, branding, and value addition. For Sadiki and Huguette, the training was more than just technical support. It was a catalyst.

With guidance from the project, they rebranded their products under the name “MADESU Products,” a tribute to the Swahili word for beans, which is also familiar, trusted, and rooted in Congolese culture. They diversified their product line, offering graded dry beans in consumer-ready sizes, and soon after, introduced canned beans fortified with iron and zinc to help combat malnutrition.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE