Africa Eats was founded in July 2020, but the business plan was written back in late 2018 and the financial model iterated many times in 2019. It is interesting to look back at the early models to see what has changed. Little has changed in terms of structure, but quite a lot has changed in terms of scale. The 2019 model seemed aggressive at the time, but now it looks tame. In 2019 the estimate...
Africa Eats’ mission is to lower hunger and eliminate poverty across Africa. Dropping post-harvest losses from 40% to 2% is one way to lower hunger. The other is increasing the incomes of farmers, which simultaneously and directly eliminates poverty. On average, the bizi double the income of their farmers. We’ve seen that proven in the first 60 Decibels report on the farmers of East...
Africa Eats quite often touts the fast growing revenues of the bizi. But are they profitable? Profitabilty is not commonly a question asked of early-stage fast-growing companies. Over in the corner of venture capital funding tech-based startups, profits are often an afterthought. But the bizi are not tech-based and the reason past updates have not discussed profits is that the bizi are far more...
Africa Eats’ mission is to lower hunger and eliminate poverty across Africa. Dropping post-harvest losses from 40% to 2% is one way to lower hunger. The other is increasing the incomes of farmers, which simultaneously and directly eliminates poverty. On average, the bizi double the income of their farmers. The increases range from 60% for the honey aggregators to 400% for Goldenpot‘s...
What happens when you put two dozen entrepreneurs in a room together for two days, and rather than speak to them, facilitate conversations between them? The results feel magical. The companies open up to to share the challenges they face, and from that they share solutions that have already been tried including solutions that actually work. Challenges such as how to efficiently work with 1,000+...
In the 2022 letter to shareholders, one of Warren Buffett’s best quotes was, “At Berkshire, there will be no finish line.“ Africa Eats is not a fund. We don’t exist for just 10 years, to create a short-term growth spurt, gain a profit for our investors, and disappear from the world. Instead, our business model includes some core ideas from Berkshire Hathaway, with the...
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 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...
Africa Eats’ recipe is one cup venture capital fund, two cups business accelerator, and three heaping teaspoons of Berkshire Hathaway. Add in two dozen fast-growing, homegrown, bottom-up for-profit solutions to hunger and poverty across Africa. Stir vigorously. Feeds billions. This isn’t some old family recipe. Neither is it the common way these things are done. But after...
The six months of 2022 continues the revenue growth we’re used to at Africa Eats. An aggregate of $11.6 million was earned by our portfolio companies, putting them on track to reach $24M-$25M for the whole year. To put this in some perspective, when we launched Africa Eats back in 2020 we were touting a total of $6.7 million in revenues in 2019. The same portfolio earned that just in Q2...