Agriculture sits at the centre of Africa's growth story and at the edge of its hardest financing problem. Value chains are fragmented, sponsors are often informal or first-generation, and the assets that need capital, from primary production to processing, storage, logistics, and agro-parks, carry seasonality and climate risk that conventional credit committees struggle to price. We work across that divide.
We help development finance institutions, investors, and project sponsors move agribusiness and agri-finance opportunities from concept to commitment and implementation. That means building bankable pipeline, structuring blended and de-risking instruments that crowd in commercial capital, preparing sponsors for the scrutiny of credit and investment committees, and connecting value-chain actors, from cooperatives and aggregators to processors and offtakers.
How we work
We start with the investment thesis and the value chain behind it, then work backwards to what a financier needs to see. We map the constraint, whether it is pipeline that is not yet bankable, or a capital structure that cannot absorb agricultural risk, and we build the readiness playbook that resolves it. We structure blended and concessional finance to crowd in commercial lenders, we test commercial assumptions the way a diligence team would, and we prepare sponsors and intermediaries to meet investors’ expectations on governance, environmental and social performance, and investibility.
- Agribusiness investment strategy
- Agri-finance and agtechs
- Agro-parks and processing zones
- Value-chain mapping and aggregation models
- Capital mobilization and transaction support
From field to financed value chain
Agriculture becomes investable when the value chain is organised: producers aggregated, processing anchored, offtake secured. We structure the finance around that chain, not around a single farm.
What is shaping Agribusiness & Agri-finance
Africa's agri-SME financing gap remains close to $100 billion a year
Agri-SMEs across African value chains face an annual financing gap estimated at roughly $100 billion, with agriculture receiving less than 5 percent of commercial lending despite its weight in employment and food security. In response, DFIs are standing up catalytic and blended facilities, such as the AfDB and Government of Canada Agri-SME Catalytic Financing Mechanism, to channel concessional capital and technical assistance through financial intermediaries.
The binding constraint is rarely a shortage of capital in aggregate; it is the absence of bankable, committee-ready propositions and the structures that let commercial lenders take agricultural risk. Sponsors and intermediaries that arrive with de-risked structures and DFI-grade documentation will capture a disproportionate share of the blended capital now being deployed.
Climate adaptation finance for African agriculture is badly underfunded
Agriculture employs hundreds of millions of Africans yet receives only about 26 percent of available adaptation funding, roughly $3.4 billion a year, against an estimated agricultural adaptation need of around $365 billion through 2035. Agri-SMEs also carry an insurance protection gap reported near 97 percent.
Climate resilience is moving from an environmental add-on to a financing precondition. Investors and sponsors who build adaptation, climate-smart practices, and risk-transfer mechanisms into deal design from the outset will find it easier to access concessional and climate-linked capital, and to satisfy the climate criteria investors apply at entry.
Digital agriculture is scaling but few solutions reach commercial scale
The number of digital agriculture solutions across low and middle-income countries grew from about 152 in 2013 to roughly 1,400 in 2023, yet only a handful reach more than one million users. Long agricultural return horizons sit awkwardly with the five to six-year exit windows most investors operate on, leaving value chains digitized in parts rather than end to end.
Agritech that improves price discovery, storage, logistics, and farmer data can make underlying agribusiness assets more financeable, but the mismatch between agricultural timelines and standard fund structures means patient and blended capital, and advisors who can bridge the two, are essential to turning pilots into investable platforms.
On a flagship agro-industrial programme, our senior team co-led the private-sector integration strategy, anchoring investment around capable private operators while directing sovereign financing to the enabling infrastructure, feeder roads, energy, and connectivity, that turns an economic corridor into a commercially bankable proposition. We embedded agri-infrastructure inside those broader corridors, combining agriculture, connectivity, and critical minerals so that projects generate the revenues and scale that draw in co-financing.
From there we built the investable pipeline itself, a $3 billion pipeline of opportunities across 12 countries, maturing priority projects to the point of financing and taking them to global and regional investors. We led the investment-thesis and bankability studies, developed the PPP transaction structures, and presented financing recommendations to private sponsors, government counterparts, and commercial anchor partners, then coordinated the co-financing pipeline across a syndicate of leading development finance institutions, securing more than $300 million in commitments.
We work the other end of the value chain too, preparing investment-readiness and bankable proposals for agri-MSMEs and cooperatives, and designing the SME financing mechanisms, incubation and accelerator support, and enterprise-support capacity building, including blended structures for early and growth-stage businesses, that build the pipeline of tomorrow.
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