Twiga Foods Secures Fresh $29.4m for Expansion

By Adedapo Adesanya

Kenya agri-tech startup, Twiga Foods, has secured $29.4 million in debt funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to support more than 300 irrigated medium-scale contract farmers to complement Twiga’s seasonal smallholder farmer supply base.

Founded in 2014, Twiga Foods is a business-to-business food distribution company that builds fair and reliable markets for agricultural producers and retailers through transparency, efficiency and technology.

Twiga will use the funds to set up a distribution centre in Nairobi and deepen its conversion to offering supply chain services for both agricultural and FMCG products.

The Nairobi-based company will invest in expanding into more cities in Kenya, including Mombasa. Twiga is also targeting Pan-African expansion by the third quarter of 2020.

The startup is one of the best-funded on the continent, securing a $10.3 million Series A funding round in 2017, a further US$10 million in November 2018, and US$34.75 million across two rounds in 2019.

With this, it has now secured further capital from the IFC’s Global SME Finance Facility through unfunded risk-sharing facilities (RSFs) with tier 1 commercial banks, with the first phase being led by Kenya Commercial Bank.

Twiga will use the funding to support more than 300 irrigated medium-scale contract farmers to complement its seasonal smallholder farmer supply base.

This will stabilise year-round fresh fruit and vegetable volumes in line with Twiga Foods’ mission of supplying readily available safe, affordable, and high-quality food to Kenya’s urban markets.

Speaking on this, Twiga’s chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, Mr Peter Njonjo, said the initiative lines up strategically with the government of Kenya’s agricultural sector transformation and growth strategy, which aims at boosting food security in the medium term through the modernising and scaling of commercial farming for the domestic market.

“We’re working on French West Africa, we see significant opportunity in those markets. The company will name the new country (or countries) in the following year,” he added.

Co-founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Mr Njonjo and Mr Grant Brooke, Twiga Foods serves around 3,000 outlets a day with farm produce through a network of 17,000 farmers and 8,000 vendors. Parties can coordinate goods exchanges via mobile app using M-Pesa mobile money for payment.