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.
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Africa Eats was in the news this weekend: Novel Holding Company Africa Eats Has Raised $1.8 Million For Its Impact Startups Anne Field of Forbes did a lovely job explaining why the company was formed, how it is tackling hunger and poverty, and how the holding company model generally works. And note that between the time of the interview and publication, three more investors committed another...
What do 27 baby elephant companies do with $2 million of growth capital? They grow. Fast. Africa Eats Ltd. began just over a year ago with 27 fledglings all growing, but nearly all lacking the resources to grow as quickly as they desired. A year later, this novel investment holding company has raised over $2 million to help meet those needs. Where did that money go? Operational capital –...
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...
The first six months 2021 revenue numbers are in from our 27 investees. $8.3 million (USD equivalent). If the second half simply doubles the first, growth for the year will hit 70%. Amazing given the bizi are still dealing with lockdowns, power outages, along with the other common setbacks from young companies. Even more impressive is what happens when you ask the spreadsheet to calculate the...
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...
Aggregate revenues across the Africa Eats portfolio companies for 2020 came in at $9.9 million, up from $7 million in 2019, more than double the $4.6 million from 2018, a sixteen-fold increase from the $600,000 in 2014. Actual Aggregate Revenues 2014-2020 $9.9 million was over $1 million above our projections for 2020, as reported seven months ago in our first public post sharing revenues. Why...
One goal for Africa Eats is to be a public company, listed on a major world stock market. The sub-goal on the way there is to be a public company listed on one or more African stock markets. Why go public? A few reasons. First and foremost, because before investors invest they want to see a clear way to get their money back. For equity investors in private companies, that path is either an...
8 of the portfolio companies within Africa Eats were started in or before 2014. The rest within the last five years. Back in 2014, the cumulative revenues from those 8 companies was $600,000, and ten years later those companies were 60x larger, with $36 million in aggregate revenues. The compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2014 is 58%. That is nearly 2.5x growth every two years over 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...