Blog

Africa Thrives

Africa Thrives logo

There are hundreds of challenges when growing a company from tiny to $1 million in annual revenues. Hundreds more unique to growing companies in Africa. Funding is the #1 challenge. The next 99 are rarely ever talked about. And no one has yet created a compendium of these challenges nor stories of how they were solved. Until now. Africa Thrives is a website and book written by African...

Exporting to Europe

Swahili Honey jars

The first container of Swahili Honey beeswax and honey is on its way from Tanzania to Poland.

Building a Warren Buffett-like holdco for food/ag in Africa

Investing in Regenerative Agriculture with Luni Libes

A conversation with Luni Libes, serial entrepreneur and investor, about the enormous opportunities of African food companies and on buying from smallholder farmers and selling into the local regional markets. We also discuss why the traditional venture capital model doesn’t make any sense and a holding company does, plus why and how he wants to take the holding company public in a few years’ time...

The 2022 Report

Africa Eats (header) 2022

The biggest learning from 2022 is that the plan envisioned in 2018 works. In 2018, the vision was an investment holding company that helps high growth food/ag-focused SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) in Africa grow faster than traditional venture capital or debt funds. The core of the plan was to fill in the “missing middle” of capital for a few dozen companies, providing them the...

Images from 2022

Nothing replaces visiting companies in person. Next best from that are the video guided tours. If you’ve not watched all of those, try that tonight instead of Netflix. Beyond that, here are some images from the bizi in 2022. An original truck from TRUK Rwanda The winning pitch from East Africa Fruits Ziweto‘s new animal feed factory Zamgoat processing goats Amuria Honey beehive...

Africa’s Business Heroes 2022: East Africa Fruits

Africa Business Heroes

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...

Filling in the Missing Middle

Filling the missing middle, by Luni Libes

“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 – Animal Feed

Ziweto Enterprise, factory

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.

It takes a village to grow an SME

Africa Eats WhatsApp chat

Entrepreneurship is typically a lonely pursuit, with founders using the advisors, board members, and investors for support, but usually without a group of peers to call upon. That isn’t true at Africa Eats. Our founders have dozens of fellow founders to call upon for advice… and they do. From advice on equipment vendors to advice on strategic decisions to market information spanning...

Visiting Paniel Meat Processing and Livestock Bank

Paniel Meat Processing and Livestock Bank, two companies created by the same founder merged back together in early 2022. Business is good, growing from $35,000 in annual revenues back in 2017 to over $1.5 million USD in 2022.

In short… it works. Quite well. To see what that means in practice, below is a site visit video shot this month in Kigali, Rwanda.

Recent Posts

Categories