This Milk is a Little Nuts

Hey, Hannatu here 👋

In the 1990s, in Sweden, a small company called Oatly faced ridicule for turning oats into milk. 

The Swedes called it "weird" and "unnecessary." 

Fast forward 30 years, and Oatly is a $2 billion company that has sparked a global taste for plant-based milk. 

Now, in Nairobi, Marie-Louise Wiegert is making a similar bet, but her ingredient isn't oats. It's Bambara groundnut. 

Most Kenyans have never seen these nuts in supermarkets, but their grandmothers grew it in backyard gardens.

And just like Oatly proved that “weird milk from nuts” can become mainstream, Marie’s company, OnlyPlants, is betting that a drought-resistant, protein-packed, nitrogen-fixing legume that's completely African can as well.

But it won’t just be mainstream, it’ll fill the unmet needs of…

In 2025,  Africa’s plant-based milk market was valued at about $488 million.

By 2033, it’s expected to double.

This growth reflects a structural shift driven by the continent's high number of lactose-intolerant people, e.g., me and my editor, Timi.

We’re not alone. 

About 77.5% of Africans are reportedly lactose intolerant. In Kenya specifically, the number stands at about 39%. 

While we persist in consuming dairy, there are alternatives: almond, oat, and soy milk, all imported. 

Imported, in this case, means they’re typically expensive.

One litre of fresh farm milk costs about KSh150 ($1) at Carrefour. 

The same liter of oat and almond milk costs about KSh 600 ($5). 

Beyond price, there's the nutrition gap. 

Now you understand us better. 

Milk is one of the biggest sources of protein, and imported plant milks don't solve that problem affordably.

Marie-Louise started OnlyPlants by asking how local plants could solve nutrition affordability challenges. 

First, it was plant-based mayonnaise made from green peas and other locally-sourced ingredients.

Then came plant-based butter and spreads, all following the same principle: use what grows well in Africa to replace what we're currently shipping from abroad.

The next stop was milk. 

“People, on average, consume 67% less protein than recommended,” Marie-Louise shared. 

“This creates a need for alternative and affordable protein sources.”

Bambara groundnuts made perfect sense. 

It’s drought-resistant, grown locally, high in protein, and lactose-free. As a legume, it also improves soil fertility through nitrogen fixation.

"Once we validated the taste, functionality, and nutrition, it became clear Bambara wasn't a compromise," Marie-Louise says. "It was actually better suited to the local context."

Bambara has traditionally been cultivated by smallholder farmers, usually women, for household food security. 

It’s mainly grown in Kenya's Western, Nyanza, and Coastal regions, with an estimated yield of 527 metric tonnes as of 2022.

It thrives where inputs are low and rainfall is unreliable, so it became associated with subsistence and hardship rather than commerce.

This means it has largely remained excluded from modern value chains. 

OnlyPlants is reframing Bambara as not only a great alternative to dairy, but future-facing. 

It's climate-smart and better suited for the realities of a warming planet and resource-constrained food system.

Marie-Louise’s goal is to make this indigenous ingredient a premium on shelves in Kenyan supermarkets.

Local production means OnlyPlants can't just call a co-packer or buy ingredients from existing suppliers. 

They're building an entirely new supply chain from the ground up.

Over the past year, the company collected large numbers of traditional Bambara varieties from across Kenya, multiplied them, and down-selected to varieties that give the best outcomes for milk production. 

They're also building an outgrower program where they provide farmers with their preferred seeds and pay guaranteed prices for harvests. 

They just harvested the first field trials in Western Kenya and are planting the next batch in Laikipia. 

"All of this work takes a lot of time and resources, but we're developing important IP in the process and gaining greater control over quality and supply stability," Marie-Louise notes.

With a lot of work comes a lot of challenges. 

For one, supply is fragmented, as most smallholders grow Bambara on less than half an acre. 

There's also been huge under-investment in quality seeds, aggregation, and processing infrastructure. 

Setting up their own production facility requires high capital expenditure because traditional co-packers don't exist for Bambara processing.

But the advantages are compelling. 

OnlyPlants is building a robust, climate-resilient supply chain that they can control. They're developing real intellectual property and a defensible competitive position. 

Most importantly, they're building value locally rather than exporting raw materials, which is a principle Marie-Louise emphasizes repeatedly.

The primary focus for Only Plants in the next 2-3 years is building a strong domestic and regional business before scaling exports beyond Africa.

"Export will be an important growth lever, but not the starting point," Marie-Louise says. 

"We're prioritizing building a product specifically designed for African consumers, rather than retrofitting plant-based products developed for Western markets and priced out of reach for the vast majority of local consumers." 

She views the local market as massive and relatively untapped, capable of supporting meaningful scale on its own.

When OnlyPlants does export, it will be value-added products, not raw ingredients. 

"That allows more value addition and margin to remain on the continent," Marie-Louise emphasizes. 

This stands in stark contrast to how most African agricultural products reach global markets. As raw commodities with minimal value captured locally.

Here, OnlyPlants diverges from Oatly's path. 

Oatly captured the Swedish market first, then expanded across Europe before conquering North America and Asia. 

But while Oatly was selling into wealthy markets with established plant-based categories, OnlyPlants is creating the category while serving price-sensitive consumers. 

The global plant-based milk market was estimated at $20.84 billion in 2024, and projected to reach $32.35 billion by 2030. 

African companies have historically watched this growth from the sidelines, unable to compete with Western brands. 

However, OnlyPlants' approach, which is building for local markets first and using local ingredients, could be the model that finally lets African food companies participate in this boom on their own terms.

OnlyPlants has its eyes on other neglected crops: moringa, baobab. 

But Marie-Louise is adamant about focus. 

"Long-term, yes, there are many indigenous crops with tons of potential. But for now, our priority is Bambara, and we want to scale it properly before adding even more complexity."

Building a new value chain comes with high upfront costs. The company's priority is proving the end-to-end model with one crop first, then replicating it. 

"Once we've demonstrated that the model works, it becomes repeatable," she notes.

This discipline mirrors successful food tech companies globally. 

Beyond Meat focused solely on burger patties for years before expanding to sausages and chicken. 

Impossible Foods did the same. 

Oatly stuck with oat milk for decades before launching ice cream and yogurt. 

OnlyPlants sees itself as part of a broader shift toward reclaiming indigenous food systems. 

According to them, food sovereignty is about choice and control. 

Choice over what crops are grown, and control over where value is created.

For too long, African food systems have been shaped around imports and exports rather than local nutrition and environmental resilience. 

OnlyPlants' goal is to show that indigenous crops can power modern, scalable food businesses, not just subsistence farming.

For them, beyond revenue targets, having farmers earn stable, dignified incomes is success. 

So are local consumers accessing affordable, clean, and nutritious foods. 

"If we can help shift even a small part of the food system from extraction to value creation, that's meaningful impact," Marie-Louise says.

If indigenous crops like Bambara were fully integrated into Africa's food systems, the effects would ripple across multiple dimensions. 

Farmers would have more stable and climate-resilient livelihoods with crops that perform well under local growing conditions and have reliable market demand. Consumers would gain increased access to affordable, high-protein foods meeting local nutritional needs. 

At a systems level, food sovereignty would be strengthened by reducing import dependence and keeping more value addition local.

More broadly, it would re-center African food systems as a source of solutions rather than merely a recipient of them. 

The global plant-based movement started with companies like Oatly proving that alternatives could be delicious and desirable. 

Now, African companies like OnlyPlants are proving that the best alternatives might not need to be imported at all. They're already growing in the ground, waiting to be rediscovered.

For those of us like Timi and me, who've been choosing between expensive imported oat milk at 600KSh ($5) and fresh dairy at 150KSh ($1) that our bodies struggle to digest, OnlyPlants represents something simpler.

Affordable plant-based milk that doesn't hurt our stomachs.

And even better, we'll know we're consuming plants grown in Africa, processed in Africa, creating value in Africa. 

What local food from your community deserves a spot as the next superfood?

Tell us here.

P.S: And if you enjoyed reading this story, pass it on. Someone in your network needs to read this. Share Ag Safari!

Cheers,