The bizi of Africa Eats work with over 100,000 smallholder farmers, buying their outputs or providing their inputs. In either case, growing the incomes of these farmers between 40% and 500%, turning a typically subsistence activity into a middle class income. Growing this network above 100,000 took quite some time, as there needs to be a buyer for every piece of fruit, bag of maize flour, or...
Africa Eats funds and supports for-profit solutions to hunger and poverty. We are capitalists, not philanthropists. But unlike most capitalists, we don’t hide from risk, seeking the safest returns, but instead follow the opportunities where few others are investing, seeking the biggest opportunities for growth and thus the biggest opportunities for returns. That is why we focus on food...
Africa Eats may only have been around since 2020, but 14 of our portfolio companies have been operating since at least 2016. What is amazing to see is the growth of these companies. We’ve previously touted their growth in terms of aggregate revenues. Today let’s instead look at their growth in terms of individual scale, dividing them up by those above $250,000 in annual revenues (USD...
The following is an excerpt from a Sankalp Africa 2022 panel talking with real African entrepreneurs about the challenges of fast-growing companies in Africa.
The speakers include the founders of Agro Supply, East Africa Fruits, Ziweto Enterprise, Paniel Meat Processing, Livestock Bank, and TRUK (Rwanda).
When the words “cash crop” is used in Africa, most people think first about coffee, tea, and cacao, if not also about cashews, mangoes, and palm oil. But no, those thoughts overlook the staples of cassava, maize, and yams, and the huge quantities of bananas, tomatoes, onions, and rice. Some of these products are grown more in Africa than anywhere else in the world: More more details...
Why are the opportunities in Africa larger than elsewhere in the world? Simple. Demographics. The average age in Europe is 42, with more people retiring each year than children being born. THe same is soon true in America, Asia, and Australia. But in Africa, the average age is only 19. In simple terms, half of everyone in Africa is child or teenager. A bit younger if you leave out North Africa...
Back in 2020 when the pandemic began, Paniel Meat Processing found itself with an internal logistics system covering the major cities in Rwanda, but excess capacity due to the lockdowns. To keep the trucks busy, they spun out Paniel Transport & Logistics. Creating new companies to solve internal problems was not new to Herve Tuyishime, founder/CEO. He had done the same with livestock...
How do you value a portfolio of young, fast-growing, private companies? One at a time. There are a multitude of valuation methodologies for public companies, most of which do not work for companies with 50%+ annual growth, nor for any company that is plowing profits back into the company to keep up or speed up that growth rate. Investopedia has a good primer on valuation. Africa Eats uses a...
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...