In Burundi’s northern province of Ngozi, where agriculture sustains most households but rarely translates into economic security, Barutwanayo Ancille has built a woman-led agro-processing enterprise that is reshaping livelihoods, food systems, and women’s participation in trade.
As Founder and Managing Director of the Women Soya Milling Company (WSMC), her work demonstrates how value addition can move women from survival-level production into enterprise, income, and regional markets within the East African Community (EAC).
Ancille’s journey into entrepreneurship was not born of privilege or opportunity, but of necessity. Trained and employed as a university lecturer, her professional life was abruptly disrupted during Burundi’s 2015 political and economic crisis, when public salaries went unpaid and formal employment became uncertain.
With responsibilities to her family and few alternatives, she turned to agriculture and food processing, activities deeply familiar to women but rarely recognised as viable businesses. She began processing small quantities of soya in her kitchen, selling to neighbours and local markets. As she reflects, people mocked her actions of selling porridge despite her academic achievements.
Instead of deterring her, this only reinforced her resolve. “I can have shame if I steal, not if I work” she told herself, blocking the distractions. That conviction, rooted in dignity and resilience, became the foundation of her enterprise.
Ancille was also driven by something else. She observed a persistent structural problem; women produced soya and other crops, yet sold them cheaply as raw commodities while value addition and market power remained elsewhere. Determined to challenge this pattern, she formalised her operations in 2010, establishing the Women Soya Milling Company with a clear purpose; to place women at the centre of processing, pricing, and trade, not merely production. Starting with less than 50 US dollars, spent on purchase of her first grinder, Ancille slowly expanded production, reinvesting every small profit into equipment, raw materials, and learning.
Economic Impact at Scale: Value Addition, Jobs, and Women’s Incomes
Today, the WSMC is a fast-growing agro-processing enterprise. While specialising in the milling and packaging of soya-based products, it has expanded into maize, sorghum, finger millet, rice, wheat, and sesame. The enterprise processes over 60 tonnes of soya annually, transforming raw crops into nutritious, market-ready products, including its flagship Soya Nutrition Plus.
The company employs approximately 40 workers, 80% of whom are women, and creates additional income opportunities for youth through transport, packaging, storage, and distribution. Women are involved in processing, quality control, packaging, and administration, an intentional shift that challenges gender norms within agribusiness.
Equally significant is Ancille’s integration of smallholder farmers, the majority of them women, into a structured value chain. By sourcing soya directly from producers, she offers predictable demand, fair pricing, and reduced dependence on exploitative intermediaries. For women farmers, this has translated into more stable incomes, improved food security at household level, and the ability to invest in education, health care, and farming inputs.
Her products are sold in local markets and institutions including schools, hospitals, prisons, orphanages, and programmes supporting blind and vulnerable persons. This institutional reach directly links agro-processing to nutrition security, addressing protein deficiency and malnutrition among children and at-risk populations. With annual sales of approximately 15 million Burundian francs, the enterprise demonstrates commercial viability alongside social impact.
In addition to employment and sales, Ancille has catalysed a powerful form of systems change through women-led finance. Working with producer groups, she supported the formation of over 50 women’s savings groups, which evolved into a community-based microfinance mechanism. This initiative provides access to small loans without land titles or conventional collateral, enabling women to start businesses, expand farming activities, and manage emergencies. In a context where women’s access to finance is structurally constrained, this represents a transformative shift in economic agency.
Advancing Women in Trade through the EAC 
Ancille’s enterprise aligns closely with the EAC Common Market Protocol, particularly the free movement of goods and the promotion of cross-border trade. Through the EAC Simplified Trade Regime (STR), her products reach markets in Rwanda, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Uganda, illustrating how women-led SMEs can participate in regional trade when regulatory pathways are accessible.
Ancille has actively participated in EAC trade fairs in Kigali and Dar es Salaam, using these platforms to build networks, test regional demand, and improve product presentation and packaging. Her experience also reveals the gendered barriers women face in trade; limited awareness of trade rules, fear of border harassment, documentation challenges, and lack of capital. By navigating these constraints and sharing her experience, she contributes not only as a trader but as a knowledge resource for other women.
Her work directly advances the EAC Industrialisation Policy, which prioritises agro-processing and value addition, and the EAC Gender Policy (2018), which calls for women’s full participation in economic life. By moving women from raw production into processing and trade, Ancille operationalises regional policy commitments at enterprise level.
As a recognised East African Woman in Trade Champion, an initiative under LIFTED project, Ancille has gained visibility and legitimacy after years of operating in relative obscurity. The recognition has strengthened her confidence and her ability to inspire others, encouraging them to claim the space in enterprise and trade. Her leadership demonstrates that women-led agro-processing is not peripheral, but central to regional food systems and trade integration.
Climate-Resilient Agribusiness and a Forward-Looking Regional Vision
Looking ahead, Ancille’s vision is anchored in sustainable, climate-resilient agribusiness and regional growth. Soya, as a crop, supports soil fertility and diversified farming systems, making it well suited to climate-smart agriculture. By promoting improved farming practices among her suppliers, she strengthens resilience against climate shocks while safeguarding supply consistency.
The enterprise applies principles of the circular economy, reusing by-products from processing as animal feed and organic inputs, reducing waste while maximising value. “We waste nothing,” she explains. “Everything from soya gives life; to people, animals, and the soil.”
Her long-term plans include upgrading milling equipment, investing in solar-powered dryers, improving storage facilities, and meeting certification requirements of the Burundi Bureau of Standards, all essential steps for scaling production and accessing higher-value regional markets.
Ancille’s long-term vision is unapologetically ambitious; financially independent women, reduced malnutrition, and no jobless mothers. She also envisages deeper collaboration among women-led agribusinesses across the EAC built on shared learning, collective sourcing, and joint market entry strategies that reduce risk and enhance competitiveness.
Through her leadership, Ancille is transforming Burundi women’s participation in trade; from informal, peripheral and invisible, to structured, productive, and regionally connected. Her impact story embodies the promise of the East Africa Women in Trade Champions Initiative; that when women control value addition and markets, the benefits ripple outward to families, communities, and the East African region as a whole.