A conversation with Eugene Willemsen of PepsiCo

Loading player...

This past week I sat down with Eugene Willemsen. Eugen is the Chief Executive Officer for Africa, Middle East and South Asia (AMESA) at PepsiCo. With a rich career spanning over 27 years in PepsiCo, Eugene has risen through the ranks to steer the AMESA region valued at $6.1B in annual net revenue (as of 2021) and supporting over 26,000 jobs across 74 markets.

We talked briefly about PepsiCo’s views on climate change, its programmes and work in Africa, and some exciting work PepsiCo is doing on food security programmes, regenerative agriculture, and support programmes for smallholder framers. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

13 Mar 2023 English South Africa Investing · Food Wandile Sihlobo

Other recent episodes

Four ways South Africa can use to lift the global food security matters in the G20

South Africa, the only African country that is a member of the G20, holds the presidency of the grouping until the end of November 2025. During this time, it could help drive the African continent’s food security agenda. For agriculture, South Africa has set four G20 priorities: * the promotion of policies and…

12 Apr 13 min

SA must work to diversify its agricultural export markets

South Africa was not spared of the "Liberation Day" tariffs announced by US President Trump against various countries. South Africa will face tariffs between 10% and 31% in the US for all products. The specificity of by-products is not yet clear. We know now that a baseline tariff of 10%…

7 Apr 12 min

SA summer crop harvest set to recover robustly in 2024-25

South Africa's agriculture is recovering after a challenging mid-summer drought that led to significant crop losses in the 2023-24 season. The Crop Estimates Committee (CEC) 's data released at the end of March 2025 paints an encouraging picture of this new season's summer crop production prospects. For example, the 2024-25…

29 Mar 12 min

There is rising optimism in South Africa’s agriculture

We have a challenging year like this one where there remains discomfort about the Expropriation Act in some sections of South Africa and rising geopolitical tensions; we were pleasantly surprised to see rising optimism in South Africa’s agriculture. The Agbiz/IDC Agribusiness Confidence Index (ACI) – a sentiment indicator in South…

24 Mar 11 min

The conundrum of rising agricultural output and worsening food security in South Africa

South Africa has the contradiction of being the leading agricultural exporter in Africa, while swelling number of households that is food insecure. Without proper policy engagement of this challenge, the sector face the risk of more waves of misconceptions about its export-driven growth drive while many South Africans are impoverished…

15 Mar 12 min

All episodes