1. Could you start by introducing Africa Eats and explaining its mission to support scalable, sustainable, and locally owned agribusinesses across Africa?
Africa Eats looks like a fund, but it’s not. It’s an investment company. We took the best parts of venture capital, business accelerators, and lessons from Berkshire Hathaway, and applied them to make a dent in hunger and poverty in Africa. We do that through for-profit means, by investing in companies that are building the food and ag supply chain on the continent. This creates incomes for smallholder farmers, reduces post-harvest losses, and turns these challenges into profitable business models.
2. Africa Eats supports entrepreneurs solving fundamental challenges in food production, logistics, and processing. What makes this model different from traditional venture capital or development funding?
The flaw in most VC or loan funds, often backed by DFIs or governments, is that they seek companies that can scale quickly and exit in a market that lacks exits, or take on large loans and pay them back in full. That misses almost all SMEs. Africa Eats is instead focused on long-term investments. The key difference is providing the right capital in the right form at the right time to companies that can grow 50-fold, 100-fold, or even 1,000-fold.
3. From your experience, what are the biggest barriers African agribusinesses face when trying to scale, and how is Africa Eats addressing those challenges?
The number one through ten issue is funding. There are tens of thousands of fundable SMEs just in the food and ag sector, but maybe only 200 funders, and most won’t invest until a company hits $1 million in revenue. Yet thousands of smaller businesses could double or triple quickly with $25,000 to $100,000 investments. We’ve proven this with 24 companies over five years, growing their combined revenues sevenfold and our portfolio value tenfold.
4. Your portfolio spans several African countries. How do you ensure that Africa Eats remains impactful and financially sustainable across such diversity?
We’re active in nine countries, and that’s by design. Diversity reduces risk. Many investors before us failed by focusing on a single country; if something goes wrong there, the whole portfolio suffers. We prefer geographic diversity to build resilience.
5. Mauritius is increasingly positioning itself as a bridge between Africa and global investors. How do you view its role as a financial and strategic hub?
We see Mauritius as Singapore 30 years ago. Hopefully, it will become what Singapore is today for Southeast Asia, a hub for regional investment. It’s already the best place in the African Union for centralizing capital, even if there’s still infrastructure to improve. That’s why we’re based and listed there.
6. Food security and climate resilience are global priorities. How does Africa Eats integrate sustainability and environmental responsibility into its investment strategy?
Most of our investee companies buy from smallholder farmers, who are nearly 100% organic and sustainable. They are typically not certified, because there’s no market premium for organic food in Africa. Since 99% of the food we help produce is eaten in Africa, we focus our resources on feeding people, not certification.
7. Technology is transforming agriculture globally. How do you see digital tools shaping Africa Eats’ next growth phase?
Agri-tech is nice to have, but not essential. The technologies that matter most to us are trucks and mobile phones, for logistics and communication. You can’t feed Africa with an app. You feed Africa by physically moving food.
8. Africa Eats focuses on aggregation, supporting multiple small businesses that collectively build resilient food systems. Could you share a success story that illustrates how this model works?
East Africa Foods is our biggest success story. It started in 2013 with a few thousand dollars, buying vegetables from smallholder farmers and selling to restaurants in Dar es Salaam. We invested $65,000 when it was a brand-new company. Today, it generates about $18 million in annual revenue, buys from tens of thousands of farmers, and sells to tens of thousands of retailers across Tanzania, Zanzibar, and now Kenya. That’s 200x growth, and it still only handles about 2% of Tanzania’s food, so there’s room to grow.
9. The UAE and Gulf investors are increasingly seeking responsible, high-impact opportunities in Africa. What role can Mauritius and Africa Eats play in connecting Gulf capital to Africa’s food sector?
Mauritius already acts as a hub for channeling foreign capital into Africa, we’re just helping strengthen that. Africa Eats listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius last year, so investors can now buy shares directly. We also launched a sister company, Tuesday Markets, to improve liquidity in African markets. It provides daily liquidity for Africa Eats and several of our investees, and we plan to list all our success stories so global investors can join the growth.
10. Finally, what message would you like to share with Khaleej Times readers about Africa’s agribusiness opportunities and the role investors can play in driving lasting change?
My fundamental thesis is this: look at what happened in China and India. Both were poor, agrarian economies that transitioned into global economic powerhouses. Africa, with over a billion people, is the last region on earth where most people are still poor. It’s inevitable that Africa will follow the same path, it’s just a matter of when. We believe that “when” begins in the late 2020s and early 2030s. Africa Eats invests in early-stage companies that will become the big brands of that era. And we’re focused on food because everyone eats three times a day. The food market is the largest addressable market in Africa, and we’re here to feed it, and grow with it.
.png)
