Despite over ¾ of Africans being farmers or children of farmers, not every African is able to eat three meals per day. Most of that is due to post-harvest losses, with up to ⅓ of the grain and almost ½ of all the fruit and vegetables grown never making it to a plate to eat.
Because of the post-harvest losses, Africa spends tens of billions of dollars per year importing food. Ending this downward spiral of mounting debt ends when Africa is a net exporter of food.
There is far too much friction in funding the existing, homegrown, for-profit solutions to hunger and poverty too often ignored by financial institutions. Not just initial funding, but growth-stage funding and critical financial services.
A solution for all these issues is Africa Eats, a holding company with a diverse set of African food/ag companies supporting hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers, feeding millions of Africans.
Africa Eats does not try solving this problem from scratch, but instead begins with two dozen fledglings (graduates) of Fledge, the global network of conscious company accelerators. Dozens of young, for-profit, growing companies chosen from thousands as most likely to succeed, with impact embedded in their product or service, and who have all received two months of intense training, capital, and follow-on support. Companies which in 2022 earned over $24 million in aggregate revenues and which worked directly with over 100,000 smallholder farmers.
See how it works in more detail and contact us if you are interested in owning a piece of this fast-growing portfolio or if you can help us grow these companies even faster.
Which of the dozens of fast-growing companies in the portfolio grew the most in 2021? There are two ways to answer that question. Agro Supply, by percentage Measured by percentage, Agro Supply grew the fastest, from $217,000 of of revenue in 2020 to just over $1 million in 2021. Nearly five-fold for the year. This is a company with a unique model for smallholder farmers to invest in agriculture...
There are two ways to solve the biggest problems of the world (like hunger and poverty): top-down and bottom-up. Governments, foundations, and most investors take the top-down approach. They look at a region like Africa, declare is “undeveloped” and bring to it solutions they’ve seen elsewhere, which may or may not actually solve the problems. Africa Eats uses a very different...
This week we gathered together the (co)founders and managers of our portfolio companies under a tent in Nairobi, Kenya. Over 50 attendees, flying and driving in from 10 countries across the continent. Over two days we worked together to discover new common challenges, to solve issues, and to find new ways to work together to seize the opportunities building the food/ag supply chain across Africa...
From the founders of Geossy comes Amuria Honey, a new honey processor based in the Amuria District of Uganda.
Podcast #1 Wishes Granted, interviews of the top impact funders so that entrepreneurs and funders, no matter what continent they are on, can connect and build a great future. Today we talked about Africa Eats which is not an investment fund but a holding company–a totally new way to provide capital to entrepreneurs that I think we will see a lot more of. You can best think of Africa Eats as...
There are so many incredible stories to share at Africa Eats. Here is a sampling of the type of solutions we’ve invested in. Homegrown, for-profit solutions with measurable impacts lessening hunger and poverty across Africa.
For more stories, listen to The Opportunity is Africa, a podcast brought to you by Africa Eats
Zebra’s may fix what Unicorns break, but that hasn’t stopped the investing world from their focus on hunting unicorns. Maybe a little in the impact investing space, but there the world of young companies is split into “startups” and “SMEs” with the latter still looked upon as potential unicorns and the latter often derided as unworthy of investment. Rather than debate either of those two...
Most of us are used to savings and investments being the realm of banks and brokers. But for the masses in Uganda (and Sub-Saharan Africa) the banks are too far and too expensive and the local currencies a poor way to save. Instead, savings often take the form of bricks to build a home or a few chickens to feed the children or now with Agro Supply, seeds for the next planting season...
Talk to 100 foundations and government offices about their solution to hunger and poverty in Africa, and you’ll find hundreds of programs that send people out to the villages to train the farmers. These programs are pushing on a rope. Africa Eats pulls on the rope. Specifically, we invest in supply chain companies that buy from smallholder farmers. When you buy from the farmers, they then...
Every year at Sankalp Africa and countless other conferences the big NGOs, governments, and other institutions talk about helping smallholder farmers. The story rarely changes. Post-harvest losses. Low yields. More and better training. At Africa Eats, we think there is a better, far more efficient solution to these problems. Rather than funding and training farmers, we invest in and support the...