Most early-stage and growth-stage startup investors focus on valuation, and the question of whether the investee’s valuation can grow by an order of magnitude or more in the next decade. At Africa Eats, we do look at that, but we focus even more on how efficient our investees are with the money we provide them. How efficient is their use of capital? Specifically, we compute a simple ratio...
How do you get from problem to solution to profitable company in Africa? Like everywhere else, it’s complicated, but the third step is simple. Step 1, find a problem and develop a solution that customers will pay for. For Africa Eats, that problem is most often two sided, lack of demand by smallholder farmers and lack of supply by formal and informal restaurants and retailers. Step 2...
Africa Eats is a holding company that began with two dozen investees. That is accurate, but “investee” isn’t the right word. That word misses the relationships we’ve build with these companies over the past six years through their participate at and after a Fledge accelerator. Africa Eats is a holding company with two dozen subsidiaries. No, that isn’t right either...
With bizi located in eight countries across the second largest continent on Earth, with operations spread out within those countries, and often operations crossing into neighboring countries, it is a huge undertaking to visit even a handful of these companies. The next best way to visit is through site visit videos:
Africa Eats is incorporated in Mauritius. Why Mauritius? It’s the #1 choice for headquarters of pan-African companies, especially investment companies. Mauritius is also neutral ground. Africa Eats investee companies operate in many countries in many regions of Africa. Best for headquarters is to add to that diversity instead of playing any favorites. Lastly, Mauritius has an excellent...
More than 48% of the produce grown is wasted in Tanzania, amounting to over 4.7 million tons of food that would have otherwise been income to farmers. This is due to post-harvest losses suffered by smallholder farmers resulting from poor farming, transport and storage mechanisms. Much of this is due to farmers’ lack of access to markets, which makes them rely on middlemen. Usually it takes two to...
Tanzania contributes over a third of all the sunflower seeds produced in Africa yet over half of the cooking oil is imported, costing the country over 120 million USD each year. OBRI Tanzania works directly with smallholder sunflower growers to process and supply high quality, healthier and affordable sunflower cooking oil targeting low-income families in Tanzania who constitute about 80% of the...
Western Kenya consumes 400,000 chickens every day, but only 20% is locally produced. The rest are produced elsewhere in Kenya or imported from Uganda. Chicken Basket works directly with smallholder poultry farmers through aggregation, processing and distribution of chickens into the local market. We train farmers on sustainable and commercialization of poultry farming, the vetenary officer must...
More than 70% of Tanzanians live in rural areas and they depend on agriculture to survive. The drying climate, unstable market prices for their produce, and lack of access to local and global markets are the main three challenges keeping these farmers in the cycle of poverty. Swahili Honey is a sustainable beekeeping and honey production brand that aggregates and sells high quality honey produced...
Ziweto Enterprises improves lives by raising the value of livestock, providing smallholder farmers access to quality and affordable veterinary and animal nutrition products through its network of “Ziweto Agrovet Shops” In Malawi, smallholder farmers lose 30% of their farm animals to preventable diseases. Farmers lack access to reliable and affordable animal health services, often trekking long...