Yonas Alemu
Yonas Alemu, founder of the food company Lovegrass Ethiopia, has navigated a remarkable path – from growing up in rural Ethiopia, to working as an investment banker in London, and ultimately returning to his homeland to start a business.
In a recent interview with How we made it in Africa, Yonas reflected on his upbringing in a farming community in Ethiopia, where some of his earliest memories involve waking up before dawn to help in the teff fields. Teff, a tiny grass seed native to Ethiopia, is among the world’s oldest cultivated crops, domesticated between 6,000 and 4,000 BC. For millennia, Ethiopians have used teff flour to make injera, a flat, spongy sourdough bread that is a staple in their diet. Celebrated as a superfood, teff is gluten-free and rich in nutrients such as iron, magnesium, manganese, calcium, zinc, and vitamins B and C. Even Ethiopian elite runner Haile Gebrselassie has credited teff as a factor in his athletic success.
In Yonas’s village, education was available only up to grade eight, after which many children returned to household chores and farming. However, Yonas’s parents were determined that all their children receive a proper education. To continue his studies, Yonas had to walk 12 kilometres to a nearby town. After a year of this arduous commute, his brother, who had established a business in Addis Ababa, took him to the capital, where Yonas completed his high school education.
Upon finishing school, Yonas earned a scholarship to study in Bulgaria, a socialist country like Ethiopia at the time. He then received another scholarship to study in the UK, where he pursued engineering. However, he soon realised that the real money was in finance. “I used to go to the banks and stand by the Thames River in London and just see these glittering big buildings where all the money was made. How am I going to make it there?” he recalls thinking.
A friend then advised him to complete a financial risk management certification. “It’s quite difficult. A lot of mathematics involved,” he reflects. Yonas eventually ended up working for BNP Paribas, which was followed by roles at J.P. Morgan and Credit Suisse. Altogether, he spent over 15 years in the banking industry.
“It had always been a dream to be in banking … It was quite rewarding financially and I should have been pretty content. But quite the contrary. I was miserable, especially towards the last couple of years,” he explains. “What am I doing here? What is the point of it all? What value have I added to Ethiopia and to the people I left behind?” he recalls thinking.
In 2014, he came across teff in some health food stores in London but was perplexed after discovering the teff on shelves came not from its native Ethiopia, but from the US where it was commercially cultivated. Recalling his childhood and how hard the farmers toiled, Yonas decided to start a business selling Ethiopian food products in the global market.
Yonas began experimenting with teff-based products in his family’s kitchen and later refined these ideas in a lab. He decided to launch his company, Lovegrass, with teff-based pasta as the first product.
In 2016, Yonas left his position at Credit Suisse and relocated to Ethiopia to establish Lovegrass. Quitting his banking career wasn’t a difficult decision, as it was a move he had been contemplating for years. “I’ve been planning it and I’ve been wanting to do this for pretty much decades,” he says.
Watch our full in-depth interview with Yonas Alemu: The businessman who sold Ethiopian teff pasta to Italians
