The Africa Investment Forum organized a roundtable to present two agrifood agreements worth nearly $ 400 million as part of the preparation for its upcoming 2021 market days.

The investment opportunities, drawn from the Africa Investment Forum pipeline, will be presented in their entirety during the Market Days, which will be held from December 1-3 in Abidjan. The virtual roundtable, organized by the Atlantic Council, took place on Thursday, October 7, 2021.

During the roundtable, members of the AIF team presented an overview of the transactions to investors.

The first, which requires $ 345 million in capital, involves building and operating a food market that will serve around 15 million people in a region that is expected to be Africa’s largest food trading area. It would also serve as a market where farmers would bring produce to sell to potential customers at retail or wholesale prices. Besides farmers, the food market will provide livelihoods for fishermen, meat and dairy producers and wholesalers.

The second agreement presented concerns the scale-up of a dairy milk production and packaging company in a country of the Southern African Development Community. The project sponsors have a good operational track record in the agricultural sector and have entered into a sales agreement with a large international food and drink company for milk production. The deal, valued at $ 50.2 million, has strategic value to the national government and provides an opportunity for local production of a product that is typically imported. There is also potential for job creation and local skills development.

The roundtable also featured a roundtable with Begna Gebreyes, Senior Vice President, Africa Finance Corporation; Deji Adebusoye, Director, Sahel Capital; and Nimrod Gerber, Managing Partner, Vital Capital. Panelists discussed Africa’s role in global supply chains, bottlenecks to agricultural productivity, infrastructure limitations and other issues relevant to the agro-food sector. They agreed that Africa still lacks the processing capacity to add value to its raw materials, cocoa being cited as an example.

Agriculture and agribusiness are one of the five priority investment sectors under the Africa Investment Forum Unified response to Covid-19 pillars, in addition to energy and climate change, health, ICT / Telecoms, industrialization and trade.

Africa Investment Forum Senior Director Chinelo Anohu said: “Agriculture is one of the pillars of the African economy: it is the main employer and it is fundamental to transform rural areas, reduce poverty and facilitate economic growth. As a sector, agriculture has been insufficiently supported by investments to date, and the vision of the Africa Investment Forum is to be a catalyst for significant investments to facilitate growth over the next decade, for improve productivity and income in a fair and sustainable manner. ”

About the African Investment Forum

The Africa Investment Forum is a multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary platform that advances private and public-private partnership projects towards bankability, mobilizes capital and accelerates transactions to financial close. A flagship initiative of the African Development Bank, the Forum was launched in 2018 with seven other founding partners: Africa 50; the African Finance Corporation; the African Import-Export Bank; the Development Bank of Southern Africa; the Bank of Commerce and Development; the European Investment Bank; and the Islamic Development Bank.