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.
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...
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...