In a surprising turn of events, former CEO Peter Njonjo’s sudden departure from Twiga Foods, a prominent African agritech startup, has left investors and industry observers questioning the viability of integrating corporate expertise into the fast-paced world of startups. Njonjo, celebrated for his extensive corporate experience at Coca Cola Company, was initially brought in with high expectations of steering Twiga towards unprecedented growth and institutionalization.
Twiga Foods, a major player in Kenya’s informal retail e-commerce sector, had successfully attracted significant investments, boasting a funding portfolio running into millions of dollars. Under founder Grant Brooke’s leadership, the company had ambitious plans to revolutionize traditional supply chains in the informal retail market, leveraging the red-hot venture capital-backed agritech ecosystem.
Njonjo’s appointment was viewed as a strategic move to infuse Twiga with corporate know-how, aiming to scale the company rapidly. Grant Brooke justified the decision by highlighting Njonjo’s successful track record at Coca Cola, where he led the multinational’s West and Central Africa business unit for over two decades. The goal was to leverage Njonjo’s proficiency in managing large institutions to streamline Twiga’s operations and solidify its market position.
However, the grand narrative took an unexpected turn when Njonjo, after a brief and intense tenure at Twiga, decided to step down. The question now looming over the startup ecosystem is whether the attempt to blend corporate prowess with the agility required for startup growth has backfired.
Adding complexity to the unfolding narrative, Njonjo’s recent public remarks about finding his “raison d’etre” and pursuing entrepreneurial ventures have raised eyebrows. His personal investment in the Galana Kulalu Food Security project, a deviation from Twiga’s core business, has fueled speculation about the real motivations behind his involvement with the startup.
Observers sampled by Afrikan Heroes are expressing a certain degree of disillusionment, questioning the effectiveness of bringing in a seasoned corporate executive to navigate the unpredictable waters of a startup. Njonjo’s tenure, intended to usher in a new chapter of growth and stability, now appears to have concluded in what some industry insiders are referring to as a “failed experiment.”
The abruptness of Njonjo’s exit has left Twiga at a crossroads, with industry stakeholders seeking reassurance and clarity about the company’s future trajectory. The inherent risks associated with merging corporate leadership with the dynamic nature of startup ecosystems now seem glaringly apparent, prompting a reevaluation of whether this approach is conducive to the fast-paced and unpredictable world of technology-driven ventures.
Njonjo’s departure comes at a critical juncture for Twiga, with the startup grappling with the need to reassure stakeholders and chart a clear path forward. As the startup ecosystem reflects on this development, the case of Twiga Foods serves as a cautionary tale about the potential challenges and pitfalls of incorporating corporate expertise into the unique dynamics of startups.
Twiga Foods, a Nairobi-based agritech business that has been utilizing technology to establish supply chains in food and retail distribution on the continent, starting with Kenya, has raised $50 million in a Series C financing round to expand its efforts in the East African country and neighboring countries.
The latest funding included the majority of the startup’s Series B investors from 2019. Creadev, a family office and private equity business based in Paris and Nairobi, led the Series C round this time. Follow-on checks were also written by Africa-focused businesses TLcom Capital, IFC Ventures, DOB Equity, and Goldman Sachs’ offshoot Juven. OP Finnfund Global and Endeavor Catalyst Fund, both first-time investors, also took part.
This fundraising follows the company’s $30 million Series B round in 2019, which included $23.75 million in equity and $6.25 million in debt. Twiga has raised approximately $100 million in loan and equity investment rounds, according to Crunchbase.
Twiga’s cap table was also consolidated in this round, with prior investors getting some liquidity via a $30 million secondary offer.
Twiga will invest a portion of the funds in a proof of concept to establish a new way of producing food on the continent that covers both ends of the traceability spectrum and on a large scale.
Twiga also intends to use some of the money to launch low-cost manufactured food and non-food goods under its own brand before the end of the year.
Why The Investors Invested
Twiga Foods’ existing traction is a crucial deciding factor for investors in this round. According to the company, over 100,000 clients use the B2B e-commerce food distribution platform in Kenya, which delivers over 600 metric tons of merchandise to 10,000+ stores every day.
Despite being impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which forced Twiga to pause its projected pan-African expansion by Q3 2020, the startup made the best of the situation, according to Njonjo, and quadrupled its revenues between April last year and August 2021.
Before the end of the year, the company, which already has over 1,000 employees, plans to expand to additional East African regions, including Uganda and Tanzania.
“We are deeply convinced in Twiga’s potential to revolutionize informal retail across Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Pierre Fauvet, Africa director at Creadev, in a statement.
“Tapping into a $77 billion urban market on the continent, Twiga has gained significant traction since inception, leveraging on technology to optimize the food supply chain in African cities and constantly innovating to better tackle logistics, commercial, social and environmental challenges.”
The company’s strong team has also been instrumental in the latest fund-raise. Before taking over from Grant Brooke, Njonjo was the most senior Kenyan at Coca Cola Company where he worked for 21 years, leading the multinational’s West and Central Africa business unit as President.
A Look At What Twiga Foods Does
Twiga, which was founded in 2014, had been busy connecting sellers and outlets with farmers via an app to get various agricultural produce for the majority of its operational lifetime.
However, in order to grow revenue, the company began connecting FMCGs and manufacturers with Kenyan retailers in 2019, putting it in competition with regional rivals such as Sokowatch and MarketForce.
“We see ourselves as building a one-stop-shop for the informal retailer and all their needs. So that’s what we’re evolving into as a business,” CEO Peter Njonjo said in an interview.
Nevertheless, Twiga’s efforts, according to Njonjo, are still centered on smallholder farmers. However, after years of working with them at scale and distributing fresh product, the Kenyan firm has noticed some issues, particularly in the traceability of some produce, such as tomatoes.
Twiga now intends to personally handle the value chains of some produce where traceability may be an issue in the future.
“For us, it’s choosing value chains where you can manage the traceability issue while there are some value chains that will be harder to manage,” the CEO said, “The key thing is that we now have a more blended approach. It’s not just about working with small farmers; we still work with them but on some value chains. But we’re looking at having large commercial farms integrated into our supply chain.”
The company is addressing this by creating a proof of concept that hopes to lower the price of popular domestic plant-based food products by more than 30%.
If the company succeeds in setting it up, Njonjo believes the model may be split off as a new company to continue a more asset-light expansion strategy.
It is currently collaborating with development financing partners to determine how to grow its proof of concept, in which it will function as an off-taker to sell horticulture crops across East Africa beginning in February 2022.
Twiga intends to grow into other markets in the future, including Cote d’Ivoire, DRC Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria.
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning write
In August 2020, Twiga Foods, the Kenyan agritech startup that is disrupting agricultural supply chain in East Africa, and which has, before now, raised a total of $55 million in debt and equity, backed by investors including Goldman Sachs and International Finance Corporation, announced it was seeking new funding to enable it expand its footprint in East Africa. Barely two months down the line, Twiga Foods and IFC’s Global SME Finance Facility are set to be part of an investment of up to Kshs 3.2 billion ($30 million) through unfunded risk sharing facilities (RSFs) with Tier 1 commercial banks with the first phase being led by Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB).
Peter Njonjo, co-founder of Twiga
Here Is What You Need To Know
IFC’s Global SME Finance Facility’s proposed investment would enable IFC and Twiga Foods to reach medium scale farmers, mainly SMEs and very small enterprises (VSEs) with limited banking, limited operating track records or lower levels of collateral.
This initiative seeks to support over 300 irrigated medium-scale contract farmers to complement Twiga’s 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.
Peter Njonjo, Twiga’s CEO and co-founder mentioned that this 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 modernizing and scaling of commercial farming for the domestic market.
Co-founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke, Twiga Foods’ simple business model is to aggregate all food retailers and dealers, from the banana vendors buying in bulk to the avocado retailers selling in stock, and then connecting them to Kenyan farmers producing quality farm produce. This is a classic example of a business-to-business (B2B) model, so that vendors looking to purchase agricultural produce don’t have to travel miles to meet local producers of the produce, thereby saving them the transportation and logistics cost, increasing the productivity and demand for the produce of the farmers, at the same time reducing food waste.
These metrics are what TLCom Capital looked out for when it invested in the startup in 2019.
“TLcom’s general investment thesis for Africa is that given the high penetration of mobile, there are very large markets where demand is already proven and technology can play a true role in offering a superior value proposition over existing solutions,” said Ido Sum, partner at TLCom Capital which syndicated Twiga Foods’ recent $30 million fund raising led by Goldman Sachs.
Quite noteworthy is the fact that TLCom Capital is often strategic with its investments, going mostly for early comers with huge potential. It went for Nigeria’s Kobo360, a startup pioneering digital trucking in Nigeria through the Goldman Sachs-led $20 million investment. It also went for Andela, one of Africa’s well-funded startups. Hence, that Venture Capitalist TLCom Capital preferred to invest in tech companies in their early to growth stages, such as Twiga Foods, shows that the startup is, to a large extent, home to disrupt.
The same is also said of Goldman Sachs, America’s leading investment banker which is recently interested in Africa and international institutional firms and VCs looking to invest on the continent at a time when other international investment banks such as Credit Suisse and Barclays have cut down or exited their African operations altogether. Goldman Sachs’ investment in Twiga Foods marks its first major deal in a Kenyan firm.
Currently, Twiga Foods serves around 3,000 outlets a day with produce via a network of 17,000 farmers and 8,000 vendors. It allows parties to carry out goods exchanges through mobile apps using M-Pesa mobile money for payment.
From an initial focus on agricultural goods and connecting the produce of farmers to marketplaces, the company has since created additional revenue streams by moving into the B2B supply chain for Fast Moving Consumer Goods and other consumer products.
What Is An Unfunded Risk sharing Facility?
A Risk Sharing Facility (RSF) allows the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Bank to share risk on loans in the Bank’s countries of operations.
Under the RSF, the IFC participates in the risk of loans given by local Partner Financial Institutions (PFIs) to local companies such as Twiga Foods, with the IFC’s risk participation possible on a funded basis similar to a syndicated loan or an unfunded basis similar to a guarantee — depending on the needs of the PFI.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning writer
Twiga Foods, the Nairobi-based agritech startup disrupting the inefficiencies in the Kenyan agricultural supply chain will still come to West Africa, but not in the meantime. The food distribution company Twiga Foods has decided to suspend its West Africa plans according to chief executive Peter Njonjo, and would, consequently, be focusing on its East African markets for now.
Twiga food chief executive Peter Njonjo
Here Is What You Need To Know
Twiga Foods had planned to invest in expanding into more cities in Kenya while aiming at a pan-African expansion by the third quarter of this year.
However, according to Peter Njonjo, in an interview with The Africa Report, theplans have become “impractical for the moment” due to travel restrictions and quarantine requirements in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Njonjo, any foreign expansion, for now, will focus on countries bordering Kenya. The startup’s immediate plan is to scale up in Kenya — establishing in the country’s third-largest city Kisumu by next month after which it will enter “two or three” more Kenyan cities by the end of 2020.
Njonjo said the shift in plans is “a short-term change of emphasis” and Twiga is “not walking away from our plans to expand across the continent,” noting that Africa still has a “$300 billion problem to be solved” in terms of food access.
Again, Njonjo, who was a one-time president for West and Central Africa during his 21-year time at Coca-Cola, maintained that West Africa remains a “sizeable opportunity” for the company due to its higher rates of urbanization compared with the east,
Twiga has been operating all through the pandemic, being classified as an essential service by the Kenyan government. It has been able to retain all its employees and that should be the case for “the foreseeable future,” said the CEO.
However, the startup will “definitely” need to raise money to expand its footprint, Njonjo added. The plan is to “synchronize” the new fundraising, expected within the next 18 months, with the opening up of African markets once the COVID-19 pandemic tensions have eased.
Up till now, Twiga Foods has secured more than $67 million in debt and equity funding, the latest being a $30 million Series B raise from lenders and investors led by American banking giant Goldman Sachs and the International Finance Corporation last October.
Twiga Foods ‘s West African expansion will further cement the startup’s growing influence across Africa
Co-founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke, Twiga Foods’ simple business model is to aggregate all food retailers and dealers, from the banana vendors buying in bulk to the avocado retailers selling in stock, and then connecting them to Kenyan farmers producing quality farm produce. This is a classic example of a business-to-business (B2B) model, so that vendors looking to purchase agricultural produce don’t have to travel miles to meet local producers of the produce, thereby saving them the transportation and logistics cost, increasing the productivity and demand for the produce of the farmers, at the same time reducing food waste.
These metrics are what TLCom Capital looked out for when it invested in the startup in 2019.
“TLcom’s general investment thesis for Africa is that given the high penetration of mobile, there are very large markets where demand is already proven and technology can play a true role in offering a superior value proposition over existing solutions,” said Ido Sum, partner at TLCom Capital which syndicated Twiga Foods’ recent $30 million fund raising led by Goldman Sachs.
Quite noteworthy is the fact that TLCom Capital is often strategic with its investments, going mostly for early comers with the huge potentials. It went for Nigeria’s Kobo360, a startup pioneering digital trucking in Nigeria through the Goldman Sachs-led $20 million investment. It also went for Andela, one of Africa’s well-funded startups. Hence, that Venture Capitalist TLCom Capital preferred to invest in tech companies in their early to growth stages, such as Twiga Foods, shows that the startup is, to a large extent, home to disrupt.
The same is also said of Goldman Sachs, America’s leading investment banker which is recently interested in Africa and international institutional firms and VCs looking to invest on the continent at a time when other international investment banks such as Credit Suisse and Barclays have cut down or exited their African operations altogether. Goldman Sachs’ investment in Twiga Foods marks its first major deal in a Kenyan firm.
Currently, Twiga Foods serves around 3,000 outlets a day with produce via a network of 17,000 farmers and 8,000 vendors. It allows parties to carry out goods exchanges through mobile apps using M-Pesa mobile money for payment.
From an initial focus on agricultural goods and connecting the produce of farmers to marketplaces, the company has since created additional revenue streams by moving into the B2B supply chain for Fast Moving Consumer Goods and other consumer products.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions. He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance. He is also an award-winning writer
Apparently affected by the growing VC interest in startups during this coronavirus pandemic, Kenya’s fruits and vegetable delivery platform Twiga Foods has secured a loan of $5 million from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
Peter Njonjo, co-founder of Twiga
Here Is All You Need To Know
Twiga will use the amount to buy additional transportation and cold storage equipment to improve market supply. The company sources from more than 17,000 producers and delivers agricultural products to over 8,000 retailers per week.
According to Peter Njonjo, co-founder of Twiga, the informal and fragmented market for food production and distribution in Africa was worth more than $300 billion in 2019.
This is not the first loan granted by the American DFC. In October 2019, the development agency had co-invested alongside other investors in the capital of Twiga Foods.
Twiga Foods is going after Kenya’s food sector to break the jinx of inefficiencies presently in the sector, and to ensure that the limited resources available in Kenya’s agricultural sector are well-utilised.
Its simple business model is to aggregate all food retailers and dealers, from the banana vendors buying in bulk to the avocado retailers selling in stock, and then connecting them to Kenyan farmers producing quality farm produce. This is a classic example of a business-to-business (B2B) model, so that vendors looking to purchase agricultural produce don’t have to travel miles to meet local producers of the produce, thereby saving them the transportation and logistics cost, increasing the productivity and demand for the produce of the farmers, at the same time reducing food waste.
These metrics are what TLCom Capital looked out for when it invested in Twiga Foods.
“TLcom’s general investment thesis for Africa is that given the high penetration of mobile, there are very large markets where demand is already proven and technology can play a true role in offering a superior value proposition over existing solutions,” said Ido Sum, partner at TLCom Capital which syndicated Twiga Foods’ recent $30 million fund raising led by Goldman Sachs.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer.
He could be contacted at udohrapulu@gmail.com
Twiga Foods, the Kenyan agri-tech startup trying to disrupt Kenya’s food demand and supply chains, understands that Kenyans need food, and need it badly. About 36.1%, representing nearly over 18 million of Kenya’s 48 million population are hungry. This figure is worsened by the facts that:
Peter Njonjo
Over 3.4 million people face acute food insecurity in the country; and
Agricultural productivity has been stagnating in recent years due to frequent droughts, floods, and climate change, leading to only about 20 percent of Kenyan land being suitable for farming.
Interestingly, Kenya’s agricultural sector contributes about 26% — more than one-quarter — to Kenya’s entire Gross Domestic Product. This is even as about 75% of Kenya’s entire workforce, mostly spread out in rural areas, is engaged in the agricultural sector.
Africa’s Food Security Index: Click To ExpandThese facts are the reasons Twiga Foods would be the startup of the future. The startup is going after Kenya’s food sector to break the jinx of inefficiencies presently in the sector, and to ensure that the limited resources available in Kenya’s agricultural sector are well-utilised.
Its simple business model is to aggregate all food retailers and dealers, from the banana vendors buying in bulk to the avocado retailers selling in stock, and then connecting them to Kenyan farmers producing quality farm produce. This is a classic example of a business-to-business (B2B) model, so that vendors looking to purchase agricultural produce don’t have to travel miles to meet local producers of the produce, thereby saving them the transportation and logistics cost, increasing the productivity and demand for the produce of the farmers, at the same time reducing food waste.
These metrics are what TLCom Capital looked out for when it invested in Twiga Foods.
“TLcom’s general investment thesis for Africa is that given the high penetration of mobile, there are very large markets where demand is already proven and technology can play a true role in offering a superior value proposition over existing solutions,” said Ido Sum, partner at TLCom Capital which syndicated Twiga Foods’ recent $30 million fund raising led by Goldman Sachs.
Quite noteworthy is the fact that TLCom Capital is often strategic with its investments, going mostly for early comers with the huge potentials. It went for Nigeria’s Kobo360, a startup pioneering digital trucking in Nigeria through the Goldman Sachs-led $20 million investment. It also went for Andela, one of Africa’s well-funded startups. Hence, that Venture Capitalist TLCom Capital preferred to invest in tech companies in their early to growth stages, such as Twiga Foods, shows that the startup is, to a large extent, home to disrupt.
The same is also said of Goldman Sachs, America’s leading investment banker which is recently interested in Africa and international institutional firms and VCs looking to invest on the continent at a time when other international investment banks such as Credit Suisse and Barclays have cut down or exited their African operations altogether. Goldman Sachs’ investment in Twiga Foods marks its first major deal in a Kenyan firm.
In view of all these, we therefore discuss a few strategies gleaned from Twiga Foods’ quest to disrupt the Kenyan food market.
Prove A Point First But Know That Scaling Is Important
First CEO Grant Brooke simply had to find a way to scale Twiga Foods, a startup in the often neglected African startup ecosystem — agritech. Of the whole investment made into Africa’s startup ecosystem in 2018, agritech got a meagre $20.2 million, out of which Twiga Foods got $10.2 million. Compared to fintech’s $284.6 million, this is discouraging for new comers to the agritech sector.
From all indications, these figures are a representation of the fact that even though Africa has a yawning food sufficiency gap, startups who take the path of agri-businesses often face low investment appetite from investors. Nigeria’s agritech startup Farmcrowdy, one of Africa’s top-funded agritech startups for instance, has been able to raise slightly above $2 million in funding from VCs since its founding in 2016.
Of course, investors are not to blame: entering early stage startups in Africa’s agritech startup ecosystem appears foolhardy, with all the risk associated with crop yields, partly brought about by changes in climate and diseases.
So Twiga’s strategies were to first avoid the crop production stage, in preference of the post production stage when crops are ready to be harvested; and to eliminate the final consumers from its model. Consumers in the African food markets are highly dispersed, making it grossly difficult to aggregate them. They are also highly unpredictable. Pursuing them would increase cost per acquisition for any startup, at the same breath, creating unnecessary competition from dispersed local markets where they are used to buying and selling from.
Therefore, by targeting the middleman between the farmer and consumers, Twiga found an easily large market to scale. The startup already has more than 17, 000 producers for direct delivery to more than 8,500 vendors.
Africa’s Agritech Startups Who Solve The Inefficiency Problem In The Agric Supply Chain May Win
Twiga’s other strategy is simple: find an efficient way to deliver to final consumers at lower costs. Inefficiencies in the supply chain have been blamed for high food prices in African cities, where close to 90 percent of the supply comes from informal retail outlets. Kenyans spend 45 percent of their disposable incomes on food, compared to 14 percent for South Africans and 10 percent for citizens of most European countries. To solve this problem, Twiga followed a simple pattern:
Get a farmer to sign up to join Twiga.
Twiga visits and assesses the farm, then adds farmer onto system.
Twiga issues a purchase order to book the produce and indicate date of harvest.
Twiga harvests and weighs farmers produce and issues you with a receipt.
Farmers receive payment within 24 hours.
All produce is gathered at over 30 Collection Centres across Kenya from the farms.
Produce goes to the Packhouse for processing, grading and dispatch to over 60 sales routes.
A vendor signs up to join Twiga.
Twiga sales representative visits vendor and registers them onto system.
Vendor places order with sales representative.
Twiga delivers produce directly to vendors shops.
Through this, the farmer benefits from: guaranteed market; transparent pricing as seen on price boards; farming advice;resources and access to credit from Twiga’s partners. On the part of vendors, the benefits include quality produce; free delivery; assured food safety through easy tracking; access to credit from Twiga’s partners; and fair prices for produce.
The end implication of this simple process is that Kenyans would spend less to purchase food produce. This would in turn encourage them to budget more on food.
Can Using Corporate Expertise Like Twiga Foods Assist Startups To Grow Faster?
To beat the glut in investment in Africa’s agritech startup ecosystem, Twiga quickly appointed Peter Njonjo to take over from founder Grant Brooke. Although the startup has previously raised $10.3m from investors and secured $2 million in grant funding from organizations such as USAID and the GSMA in 2017, followed by a 2018 $10m investment from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), TLcom, and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme, bringing Njonjo onboard the startup may seem more or less a strategic move to capture more market and scale quickly.
“Starting new ventures is really my skill-set and passion, while proficiently running institutions is Peter’s skill-set and passion. Twiga has an aggressive growth plan and this transition leverages on our respective expertise, ” Brooke said.
Njonjo was the most senior Kenyan at Coca Cola Company where he worked for 21 years, leading the multinational’s West and Central Africa business unit as President.
Peter Njonjo’s appointment, noted Mr Brooke, presents a first; with a senior executive in a Fortune 500 Company joining an African startup, a “clear testament of the increasing capacity of venture capital in funding and solving significant problems and harnessing opportunities on the continent.”
“If my leadership was the period in which Twiga was proving a point that there’s a better way to build food safe and secure markets, Peter’s leadership will be about institutionalizing this way of doing business and scaling it. Peter’s experience in building efficient supply chains and last-mile distribution in over 33 African countries makes him uniquely suited to lead us,” said the outgone Twiga Foods CEO Grant Brooke.
Currently, the startup has reached more $50 million in total funding since 2014 when it was founded, over $35 million achieved under Njonjo’s leadership.
Critically speaking, Twiga’s success could largely be attributed to Grant Brooke, who has built a career researching Kenya’s informal retail market, an experience dating back to his home city, Texas, in the United States. Njonjo’s appointment could be analysed as finally giving Twiga Foods an African outlook. Therefore, it is safe to say that Twiga Foods still has a long way to go in qualifying as a contemporary agritech startup founded and run by an African. Mr. Njonjo’s Africa’s first ever corporate touch at Twiga and its eventual success may however still be a lesson in strategy for African startups.
Twiga Foods: Bottom Line
To put Africa’s food needs into perspective, Kenyans have more certainty of having food than Ugandans, Rwandans, Togolese or Nigerians. This is a dire situation for the population of these countries combined, and a huge opportunity for many more African agritech startups to come onboard.
Twiga Foods has obviously found a large market for its business model. Africa’s farmers are still obscure, and remotely isolated from the large market. Twiga has started a show of allowing them to play a significant part with some force. It does this by collecting them together with technology and helping them to deliver their products to final consumers, in a safe, cost-effective and efficient way.
These are the lessons Twiga Foods has taught us in Africa’s complicated food supply chain, and why Twiga Foods may be Africa’s next unicorn (and indeed the first agritech startup to achieve such feat) in ten years to come, if it gets its processes and team right.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world
