Africa’s appetite for meat is changing faster than its ability to produce it.

Rising incomes and growing cities are shifting diets. Demand is moving ahead of supply. But the constraint isn’t the farmer’s willingness to raise livestock — it’s access to the inputs that make farming commercially viable: quality animals with good genetics, reliable feed, veterinary care that arrives before the animal dies. Most smallholder farmers in Rwanda have land and labour. What they lack is the starting point.

Without it, the supply chain for processed meat runs on imports and inconsistency.

Herve Tuyishime had already built Rwanda’s most disciplined meat processing operation in Paniel Meat Processing. The supply problem was the one he couldn’t solve from the processing end.

He founded Livestock Bank in 2016 to solve it from the farm end — giving smallholder farmers quality animals at no cost, covering feed, water, and veterinary care, and buying the animals back at market price when they were ready. The farmer keeps a share of the sale. The offspring go to new farms. The network expands.

By end of 2021, the model had placed 8,500 animals across more than 1,000 smallholder farms across four districts in Rwanda.

Livestock Bank places pigs, goats, sheep, and rabbits with smallholder farmers across Rwanda, covering all production costs upfront. When animals reach market weight, they are sold to Paniel Meat Processing at market price. Production costs are repaid to Livestock Bank; the remainder is split with the host farmer. Livestock Bank retains 40% to fund expansion to new farms.

The offspring loop is what scales it. Each new litter means new farms, new income, and more animals moving into Rwanda’s formal meat supply chain.

The company also connects farmers to biogas systems and microloans — treating the farm as the entry point to a wider set of financial services. Expansion is planned into DRC, Zambia, Benin, Kenya, and Malawi.