Meet Femi Oke at Shop Africana
- woventogetherdundee
- 12 hours ago
- 7 min read
On a cold day in January 2026 we paid a visit to Shop Africana, a wholesale African food business tucked away in an industrial unit on Horsewater Wynd near the Hawkhill. We were given a warm and friendly greeting by its enthusiastic owner, Mr Oluwafemi Oke, known as Femi, who had agreed to share his remarkable story with us.
Born in Nigeria in 1969, Femi was one of six children and he grew up with a natural flair for building interpersonal relationships. His mother was a school teacher but also a business woman, running a shop after school finished each day. This extra income proved very valuable. Femi recalls: “All the teachers, because they were paid monthly, they would come and ask for credit from my mother, and as a result of that, all of us were popular in the school! They would punish others but not us because they thought when we go home we would tell our mum and she might stop the credit facility they enjoyed. That’s the African mentality anyway!”
Femi’s father was in the Civil Service and was posted to different regions. Femi was the only one of the six who accompanied his father to different cities in Nigeria and met people in the different divisions of the Civil Service including teachers, military and police personnel. “That really shaped my life”, he believes.
However, by the time he finished school, he was struggling academically. Realising that his skills were more practical than theoretical, his father agreed to him enrolling in Technical College, where he studied Structural Engineering. “When I got there my brain opened, because it’s more practical, and when I finished, I got admission to a College of Education. That’s what prompted me to go and study in Amsterdam.”
Femi completed a BSc in Industrial Engineering at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, graduating in 2001. “When I finished there was a problem in Amsterdam for us from Africa - we can’t speak Dutch! So the jobs available were limited to things like housekeeping or cleaning. But I’m lucky because the Ministry of Justice in Amsterdam, they give you a permit to come, and they put on my visa that I can work more than 20 hours [the maximum amount normally allowed for students]. So I go to work in a factory, and they pay me a good amount of money, so I was able to bring my wife and kids from Africa. But before they could arrive in Amsterdam, I’d already arranged to do my Master’s with Abertay University. So that is what brought me to this city.”
Femi compeleted an MSc in Industrial Environmental Management in 2003, which included practical research at Scottish Water’s Wastewater Treatment Plant in St Andrews. He was then offered the chance to stay on to do four years of doctoral research. “I did that with Tennant’s Brewery, Glasgow. They had a problem with SEPA [Scottish Environmental Protection Agency]. They discharged sulphates and sulphur into receiving water, which was killing aquatic animals, so every year they were paying close to £1 million in fines. They used my project as a pilot… we used anaerobic detection to stop the bacteria and help them release clean water.” Femi’s research not only improved the environment but also helped save the brewery a lot of money.
While he enjoyed his studies, Femi found the financial burden as an overseas student quite a challenge. “It got to the stage at Abertay that they logged me out of the system, because I owed too much money.” Thankfully the University Chaplain supported him and helped persuade the International Office to allow him to continue.
Femi already knew at this stage that he wanted to run an African food shop in Dundee. “I knew what I would need for the business. I would need to rent a unit, pay all the rates and the suppliers, those were big challenges.” As with the Netherlands, students in the UK were normally only allowed to work a maximum of 20 hours a week, but the Labour government of the time allowed students to opt out of this, giving Femi the opportunity to work much longer hours in order to raise enough money to pay his student debts and start the business.
He took up a job as a security guard with the company Securitay. This allowed him to work night shifts and gave him further opportunities to study. “If you work at night, the clients will be happier to find you reading than sleeping. And one of the things which promoted me was [that] the supervisor would always find me writing something – he’d say ‘you never close your eyes!’… And when I got to school, the assignment that I was supposed to submit in three or four weeks, I would finish within five days, because I don’t sleep at night. So security was good for me. The money’s coming in, I’m paying the school fees and the people I’m working for like me and recommend me.”
Femi was able to open his first Afro-Caribbean food shop at the top of the Hilltown in 2005, but it was a struggle. “It got to a state where I don’t know what to do, the money is not coming in, the business is not going well and I’m losing the little that I gather from security. But I calculated that if I work 18 hours every day, times seven, and I employ a lady to work in my shop Monday to Friday, I can make three to four times the amount”. So he took on more security work and invested all the money he made into the business. “But then there was a problem. [In 2010] the Tories took over from the Labour regime and they blocked all international visas.” Thankfully, Femi’s wife went back to university to train as a nurse, thus renewing her international visa and allowing them to continue.
By this time Femi had become an operations officer for Covert Security, and his success in this field inspired him to set up his own company, Prowess Security Solutions Ltd, in 2021. This has proved very successful and he now has operations in London, Bristol and Leeds. The company also trains personnel to Security Industry Authority standards.
Over the year, Femi’s food business has also expanded greatly, from a single shop to a major wholesale business with outlets in Perth and Arbroath. He is currently planning to open further branches in Aberdeen and Dunfermline. Femi credits his mother with teaching him good business practice – at an early age he knew the price of everything in the family shop and how many of each product would need to be sold to make a profit. He became popular for giving special offers: “If you buy anything in my shop, I give you a gift. That’s uncommon in any shop, but that’s the DNA in me to run my business… we have gifts, we have discounts and we have bonuses throughout the year, and that’s what makes us excel. That’s our competitive edge.” This generosity was extended to us, and after the interview we left Femi’s store with gifts of plantain chips and African soft drinks!
Femi sources his goods from England, Europe and Africa. “With Africa, the cost of shipping it [is] expensive but the profit margin is high. With Europe [because of Brexit] there are duties we didn’t pay in 2005 that they are charging us now on African products. In England, the only challenge is delivery. If you match these three together, if one falls, the other lifts you up, so we are trying to balance it”.
In recent years there has been a notable increase in the size and range of the African population in Dundee. As well as Nigerians, “we have Kenyans, we have Tanzanians, we have Moroccans, we have Egyptians”. This means an ever-increasing number of products to try to source, so he relies on others’ expertise. “For example, I employ one Kenyan who helps me to list all the Kenyan food. I then leave for England and visit all the Kenyan shops [to see] what I can bring back… I’m trying to cut across Africa, to make sure no matter what it is, we have it in our store.”
Within Nigeria alone there are multiple cultures that each has its own particular foods, “but there is a common food that brings us all together – we call it garri [a flour made from cassava plants]. For Nigerians, food is a vitally important part of their culture.” It also helps support the strong Nigerian work ethic. “Because we believe that we are here to better our lives, we don’t have time to socialise. [Nigerians] don’t take days off, they look for overtime… I did that for 20 years at Covert Security and they gave me all my holiday money, which helped to build my business. So that’s the kind of mentality we have, and that has been of help to us in Scotland.”
Femi’s drive to succeed is rooted in his faith. “According to my God, there’s nothing that’s impossible. Whatever Man desires, the Bible makes it clear you can achieve it, if you pursue it legitimately.” His wife (who now works as a nurse in a local care home) has also been crucial to his achievements. “She has been a rock and the light of my life - I can’t do without her.”
With all the experience of importing merchandise for his shops, he has come to know how shipping works and this led him to set up a shipping company, Alpha-Omega World Freight Services, which specialises in shipping goods to and from Africa. The three businesses (Alpha-Omega, Prowess Security Services and Shop Africana) are now all based in his premises in Horsewater Wynd.
“It has been so great to be in Dundee and I don’t think I can go anywhere else. I love Dundee!” Femi’s story has helped to inspire other students from Africa that come to Dundee, “because I let them realise the experience [I’ve had] with my four kids – we never had racism, we never had bullying.”
But Femi still has plans to spread his wings further: “I want to open an African restaurant in Dundee, that’s the next project… And last week I heard about CIC [Community Interest Company]. It’s a government initiative where you register your company and every profit you make you give back to the community. So after the restaurant, that’s what I want to do… just to say thank you Scotland for giving me a new life.”
And thank you Femi for generously giving us the time to share your story with Woven Together.
Written by Deepa Sumukadas and Matthew Jarron
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