Africaimprovedfoodstargets Shift To Commercial Food Production

Food producerAfricaImprovedFoodsis a result of a collaboration between Royal DSM of Netherlands, Dutch development bank FMO and the International Finance Corporation, the World Banks private sector development arm. Currently, it operates in Rwanda as a subsidiary company called AIF Rwanda, 7 of which is held by the government of Rwanda. Ramesh Moochikal, CEO of the holding company, explains that it is seeking hundreds of millions in investment to enable it to expand to other parts of the continent. Under the current model its customers have largely been the government of Rwanda and international organisations such as the World Food Programme WFP Catholic Relief Services and the Red Cross to supply their programmes in countries such as Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda and DRC. Currently, he says, only about 5-7 of its output is distributed commercially. As it expands further, however, that model is set to change.

When we go to these other markets in Africa - Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia and others with significantly evolved consumer markets, a large part of our business will become consumer oriented,

Moochikal says. That evolution will essentially turn the current model on its head, with 70 of production intended for commercial distribution and the other 30 earmarked for humanitarian relief.

Part of this may be due to the fact that it has lost the custom one of its key buyers in Rwanda, the WFP, at the beginning of 2024. Moochikal doesnt hide his disappointment about the loss, which he says was unhelpful to African manufacturing.

The background to this is that so far, the poorest people in Africa were being fed by a factory in Belgium, which was using Belgian crops, Belgian subsidies, Belgian labour and Belgian assets to burn carbon to bring the food here. What sense does that make when you can have an African plant that is producing it for you here in Africa using African labour and African crops?