The biggest challenge the bizi face is keeping up with demand. Truly. Those challenges then trickle down to the other common challenges of scaling up: hiring, operational capital, expanding systems, etc., but the root cause of capital needs at Africa Eats is the “high class problem” of too many orders. For example, here in 2023 Rwanda is one of the 10 fastest growing economies on the...
Africa Eats is not a passive investor in the bizi. We talk to at least one of them each day, helping through the latest challenges or helping think through the next big strategic decision. Plus a few times per year we burn a little jet fuel and many hours of driving to go visit in person. The latest of these visits was to Accra, Ghana to visit Agromyx, which has expanded its product line from...
“Most people in Africa are farmers, and they’re poor not because they’re uneducated or any less intelligent than anyone else,” says Africa Eats founder and CEO Luni Libes. “They’re poor because no one buys their outputs. No one is buying what they’re growing.”
According to The Citizen: Despite being second in the continent for the number of livestock, Tanzania is facing a deficit of nine billion litres in order to become milk self-sufficient. The number of cattle has increased from 35.3 million to 36.6 million in the 2022/23 financial year, while that of goats has increased from 25.6 million to 26.6 million. The number of other milk-producing animals...
Back in February 2021 we touted $9.9 million in aggregate annual revenues from the bizi for calendar year 2020, up from nearly $7 million in 2019. Two years later, the aggregate annual revenues have more than doubled to $24 million. This is keeping up with the fast paced growth of past years. Many of the companies are doubling their annual revenues every 12 to 18 months. East Africa Foods...
The first container of Swahili Honey beeswax and honey is on its way from Tanzania to Poland.
Africa’s Business Heroes is a seven-month competition that winnows tens of thousands of African entrepreneurs down to 10 on-stage live on TV, to 3 for a final stage of Q&A with live judges, to 1 grand prize winner. The 2022 Africa Business Hero is Elia Timotheo, founder/CEO of East Africa Fruits. The winning 3-minute pitch Highlights from the Grand Finale video stream East Africa Fruits...
“The Missing Middle” is what we call the gap in finance the majority of entrepreneurs face in getting from a viable prototype or early customers to a full-scale proven business. This talk was presented at Sankalp Global 2022 by Luni Libes, co-founder and CEO of Africa Eats. In Part 1, Luni explains who he is, and how he came to fill in this otherwise missing middle. In Part 2...
Ziweto Enterprise now manufacturers animal feed concentrates in Lilongwe, Malawi, helping lower the cost of animal feeds for smallholder farmers in Malawi, making livestock more affordable to more farmers.
The “Missing Middle” of capital is the funding for promising young companies between their initial idea and their first few million dollars of revenues. As you can imagine, getting to even $1 million USD in annual revenue is a challenge for African entrepreneurs given relatively few Angels and only a handful of seed funds. Africa Eats helped of our of bizi grow from $100,000 to over...