Luni Libes
Interview with Luni Libes
FOUNDER and CEO, AFRICA EATS
Lives in: Bainbridge Island, USA
From a meat processing enterprise in Rwanda to a Tanzanian fruit and vegetable enterprise, and a Malawian provider of animal feed and veterinary merchandise – these are just some of the businesses within the portfolio of Africa Eats. This funding holding firm is devoted to Africa’s meals and agriculture worth chain, drawing inspiration from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. In December 2024, the agency achieved a milestone by itemizing on the Inventory Change of Mauritius.
How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief, Jaco Maritz, sits down with Luni Libes, founder and CEO of Africa Eats, to speak about funding alternatives in Africa’s agribusiness sector.
Matters mentioned in the course of the interview embody:
- How Libes tailored parts of Berkshire Hathaway’s funding philosophy to create Africa Eats;
- Backing African agribusiness firms with a compounded annual income progress of 52%;
- Making use of Africa Eats’ mannequin to different African industries;
- Libes’ expertise in organising a publicly listed holding firm;
- Why Africa Eats selected Mauritius over different inventory exchanges for its itemizing;
- Insights into the challenges and funding missteps confronted by Africa Eats; and
- A better take a look at standout firms in Africa Eats’ portfolio and their progress tales.
Watch the complete interview beneath (solely out there right here on howwemadeitinafrica.com)
Interview abstract
Luni Libes, an American serial entrepreneur and founding father of Africa Eats, envisions constructing a holding firm that mirrors Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway – however with a deal with African agribusiness. His aim is to create worth for buyers by backing firms that tackle gaps within the agricultural sector.
Africa Eats at present holds stakes in 22 firms, together with East Africa Meals in Tanzania, Rwanda’s Paniel Meat Processing, and Ugandan fish farming enterprise Geossy. Its technique echoes parts of Berkshire Hathaway’s mannequin – investing in promising firms, holding onto these investments in perpetuity, and producing worth for shareholders via portfolio progress and capital positive aspects.
“As soon as we discovered an organization and we make an funding, we’ve got no plans of ever promoting that funding,” says Libes, contrasting Africa Eats to conventional non-public fairness and enterprise capital funds, that are required to exit their investments.
Like Berkshire Hathaway, Africa Eats operates with a lean crew – simply three full-time workers. Berkshire Hathaway is among the 10 most valuable public firms within the US, with a crew of solely about two dozen people in its Omaha headquarters, Libes factors out.
Nevertheless, he notes some key variations between the Africa Eats and Berkshire Hathaway fashions. As an illustration, the corporate focuses on investing in younger firms – a departure from Berkshire Hathaway’s typical strategy. Moreover, Africa Eats takes a extra hands-on position in serving to its portfolio firms develop and scale.
The making of Africa Eats
Africa Eats traces its origins to Fledge, a Seattle-based enterprise capital fund and enterprise accelerator based by Libes in 2012. Over time, Fledge obtained an growing variety of purposes from African companies, resulting in a considerable portfolio of meals and agriculture firms. In 2020, a collection of these firms have been spun out into Africa Eats, with Fledge buyers receiving shares within the new entity.
Since 2014, Africa Eats’ portfolio firms have achieved 52% annual income progress on a compounded foundation, with whole mixture revenues exceeding $36 million in 2023.
In December 2024, Africa Eats listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius, in addition to two of its portfolio firms – Ziweto Enterprises and Paniel Meat Processing (buying and selling as Elite Meat Processors).
Libes envisions extra of Africa Eats’ portfolio firms going public whereas persevering with to spend money on new companies. “The plan is that each time we deliver an organization to the general public market, we’ve got to backfill our portfolio with not less than one new one that might get there later. So we introduced two public this 12 months, we have to add two subsequent 12 months to refill the portfolio. That doesn’t imply we eliminate those that went public, however we have to have a queue of firms which are able to go public.”
A snapshot of Africa Eats’ funding portfolio
Under is a collection of firms in Africa Eats’ portfolio.
East Africa Meals: A $14m enterprise serving Tanzania’s contemporary produce wants
East Africa Meals, based mostly in Tanzania, was based over a decade in the past by Elia Timotheo. With $4,000 in financial savings, he began a enterprise that sourced fruit and veggies from farmers and offered them to accommodations and eating places. In its first 12 months, the corporate generated $100,000 in income. By 2023, its high 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 latest in Zanzibar, opened in early 2024.
“They’re by far the biggest fruit and vegetable aggregator within the nation of Tanzania by orders of magnitude,” Libes says. Notably, the corporate sells all its produce inside Tanzania, with no exports.
Its predominant 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 large vans, after which sends them via a five-day course of to ripen. And due to that, they mainly took over the banana market,” Libes explains.
Paniel Meat Processing and Truk Rwanda: Bridging gaps in meat and logistics
Libes first encountered Herve Tuyishime, the founding father of Paniel Meat Processing (PMP), in 2016. On the time, the corporate relied on a single hand-crank machine to stuff sausages. In the present day, PMP is the second-largest rooster processor and the third-largest beef processor and distributor in Rwanda, with exports to the Democratic Republic of Congo amongst different African international locations. The corporate surpassed $1 million in annual revenues in 2022, rising by over 50% in 2023 to succeed in $1.6 million.
Learn our earlier interview with Herve Tuyishime: Entrepreneur grows meat processing business into a regional exporter
PMP later spun off its logistics division right into a standalone firm, Truk Rwanda. Along with leasing area in its vans, the brand new firm established chilly storage services in Rwanda’s 5 largest cities. Truk has since crammed a essential hole in logistics companies throughout Rwanda and different components of Jap and Southern Africa by providing trucking, chilly chain options, and logistics companies for meals and agricultural firms.
Initially, Truk’s income was stalled at $500,000 in 2021 because of a scarcity of capital funding. Africa Eats unlocked worth in 2022 via fairness and debt investments that enabled the corporate to double its fleet to eight vans. This led to a 335% income enhance in 2022. With additional funding from Africa Eats, Truk almost tripled its income once more in 2023, surpassing $6 million.
Central Park Bees: A world honey enterprise
Central Park Bees, working underneath the Swahili Honey model, is a beekeeping and honey manufacturing firm based mostly in Tanzania. It aggregates and sells honey produced by a community of smallholder farmers. The enterprise was based by Joseph Kadendula, now its CEO, alongside his brother Christopher Kadendula. Africa Eats, via Fledge, found the corporate in 2018 and made an preliminary funding of roughly $21,000.
Libes remembers being struck by the corporate’s interesting packaging when he first met the founders. With Africa Eats’ backing, the enterprise grew its income from $275,000 to $2.7 million inside six years.
The corporate meets the rising demand for honey merchandise each for retail use and medical functions in Tanzania and overseas. It has turn out to be Africa Eats’ largest exporter, with shoppers in Europe, Asia, and North America. “They obtained to the size the place they’ll fill an entire container of honey or beeswax or each … And they also’re making good greenback revenue now exporting,” Libes notes.
Learn our earlier interview with Joseph Kadendula: Producing honey in Tanzania – CEO outlines the journey of Swahili Honey
Ziweto Enterprises: Tapping into Malawi’s agribusiness alternatives
Ziweto Enterprises is a provider of agrovet merchandise, a producer of animal feed, and a future producer of day-old chicks and rooster in Malawi. Libes remembers first assembly the corporate in 2016 when it operated simply three small agrovet retailers – described as pharmacies for animals – serving small-scale farmers in rural areas. On the time, every store earned solely about $10,000 per 12 months.
In 2017, the distributor supplying 80% of Ziweto’s merchandise got here up on the market, and the corporate raised the mandatory funds to amass the distributor.
By 2019, Ziweto had turn out to be the biggest provider of agrovet merchandise in Malawi, offering vaccines, medicines, and different veterinary provides to unbiased agrovet retailers whereas additionally working 10 of its personal shops. In 2022, the corporate expanded additional by constructing an animal feed manufacturing unit and reported revenues exceeding $1.3 million in 2023.
Responding to buyer demand, Ziweto started developing a hatchery for day-old chicks. Libes explains that Ziweto plans to make use of the proceeds from its public itemizing to construct out the hatchery, increase its animal feed manufacturing, and start operations in neighbouring international locations.
“What we anticipate from this firm in a 12 months or two is that these farmers are going to say, nice, these day previous chicks you’re promoting to us with the feed you’re promoting to us and the medicines you’re promoting, now we want somebody to purchase the precise chickens and produce them to market,” he says, including that he expects Ziweto to diversify into poultry manufacturing.