Tanzania-based East Africa Meals ranks among the many strongest performers within the portfolio of Africa Eats, an funding holding firm centered on backing companies inside Africa’s meals and agriculture worth chain.
East Africa Meals was based over a decade in the past by Elia Timotheo. With $4,000 in financial savings, he began a enterprise that sourced vegatables and fruits from farmers and offered them to inns and eating places. In its first yr, the corporate generated $100,000 in income. By 2023, its prime line had grown to $14 million, although it has captured only about 1% of Tanzania’s fresh produce market. The corporate operates 4 processing and distribution centres: two in Dar es Salaam, one in Dodoma, and the most recent in Zanzibar, opened in early 2024.
“They’re by far the most important fruit and vegetable aggregator within the nation of Tanzania by orders of magnitude,” stated Luni Libes, CEO of Africa Eats in a current interview with How we made it in Africa. Notably, the corporate sells all its produce inside Tanzania, with no exports.
Its important income drivers are potatoes, onions, bananas, rice, and beans. Bananas, particularly, signify a key success story. Casual merchants traditionally offered inexperienced bananas, however East Africa Meals launched a ripening course of that reworked the worth chain. “Now they’re in a position to promote ripe yellow bananas as a result of our firm buys them from the smallholder farmers, brings them to the cities in huge vehicles, after which sends them via a five-day course of to ripen. And due to that, they principally took over the banana market,” Libes defined.
Watch our full in-depth interview with Africa Eats CEO Luni Libes: Investing in African agribusiness, Warren Buffett style