AgDevCo

Agventure Limited is a farmer-owned company in Kenya, helping small and medium-scale farmers move away from monocropping and conventional tillage towards conservation agriculture and crop diversification. Sourcing canola, wheat, barley and pulses from eight shareholder farms and hundreds of emergent farmers, it runs a hot-press canola oil facility in Nakuru that sustains local jobs. Since 2024, AgDevCo has invested debt in a new pulses and seed cleaning facility for Agventure and supported the business through its Technical Assistance Facility — helping scale farmer training, digitalise field operations, and build the ESG capacity needed to sustain its growth. By end-2025, that support was translating into meaningful outcomes for Agventure's outgrowers: ↳ 2,280 farmers trained in good agricultural and regenerative practices across eight Kenyan regions ↳ 21% increase in canola yields of outgrowers supplying Agventure ↳ Outgrower volumes overtook Agventure's own shareholder farms for the first time ↳ Average outgrower income of KES 2.46M from 2025 canola sales Behind those numbers, field officers sharpened their agronomic skills with support from a lead consultant agronomist, and a new outgrower app gave the Centre of Excellence real-time visibility into farmer performance — helping the team target support where it's needed most. As Agventure's Tony Bor, Centre Lead, Centre of Excellence, put it: "This partnership sharpened our team, digitised our operations, and built climate resilience where it matters most." Read the Agventure and AgDevCo Technical Assistance Facility Project Spotlight report here: https://lnkd.in/dssqtiPJ

The Africa Food Systems Forum has opened in Kigali. Come and find the AgDevCo team in the exhibition hall. We're there all week alongside FCDO and COMESA, and we're happy to talk about how we invest in African agribusiness. If you're at the forum, join our side event on blended finance for agri-SMEs at 8am on Thursday in the Innovation Hub tent. Breakfast will be available. #AFSF2026 #AfricaFoodSystems #Kigali2026 #InvestInFoodSystems Chris Isaac John Jakobsson Christine Mwangi Diana Silali

Financing gaps for early-stage agri-SMEs remain one of the hardest problems in African agriculture, and no single form of capital solves them alone. That's the starting point for our breakfast session at the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali. Join us on Thursday 3rd September, 08:00am at the Innovation Hub, Kigali Convention Centre, for a discussion on what blended finance can realistically do about it, and where it falls short. Speakers include Mansoor Ahmad MBE Ahmad (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office), Dr Donal Brown, MRCVS, CBE (International Fund for Agricultural Development), Christine Mwangi, Jenny Scharrer, Kim Kamarebe and Habib El Magrissy. We're at the Forum all week. You'll find the team in the main exhibition hall alongside FCDO and COMESA. #AFSF2026 #AfricaFoodSystems #Kigali2026 #InvestInFoodSystems

AgDevCo has secured USD 49m for AgDevCo Ventures, a new early-stage investment vehicle within the AgDevCo group. The vehicle will invest USD 1–3m in early-stage agri companies across East Africa. It is anchored by the UK government and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with senior lending from the Isenberg Family Charitable Foundation (Ceniarth), the Small Foundation, A to Z Impact, the Rabo Foundation and the Netri Fundación Privada. Read the press release here: https://lnkd.in/eP8HStsZ Christine Mwangi

Sierra Leone ranks 185th globally on the Human Development Index, and rural job opportunities are scarce. Against that backdrop, Planting Naturals has built a sustainable, organic palm oil business. It supports a network of around 8,000 smallholder outgrowers and employs a large, local workforce. The company also invests upwards of $250,000 a year regrading the remote roads its outgrowers rely on, keeping communities connected to wider economic activity. Delivering this kind of impact takes patient capital and close engagement with investees. Our team was recently on the ground in Sierra Leone, walking the plantations with Planting Naturals — assessing soil health, biodiversity and climate resilience, and reviewing logistics and working conditions. As an active partner, we provide strategic and operational support through our specialist teams, strengthening management systems and scaling development impact. As Jan Hein De Vroe, CEO of Planting Naturals, puts it: "AgDevCo combines long-term capital with an understanding of agriculture in frontier markets. We value their alignment with our operating reality — building a sustainable palm oil business in Sierra Leone requires patience, flexibility, and a willingness to invest ahead of returns, and AgDevCo takes a genuinely long-term view. Equally important is their pragmatic approach: rigorous where it matters — governance, impact, financial discipline — but constructive and solutions-oriented. That makes them a partner rather than just a financier."

Booming agricultural exports, especially fruits and nuts, could be the new gold for African countries, per The Economist. African exports of tropical fruits, such as avocados, mangoes and pineapples, have more than tripled over the past decade, a faster rate of growth than for any other region. The article quotes AgDevCo's CEO Daniel Hulls and refers to academic research by Prof Christopher Cramer of SOAS University of London on the "industrialisation of freshness" (see link in the comments) Policies and infrastructure are improving across many countries, and private sector industry bodies are making a difference. While patience and risk tolerance is still needed, AgDevCo is committed to investing in the type of "tech-savvy" farmimg enterprises described in the article. (Free account registration needed to access the article.) https://lnkd.in/e3zke7Qz

AgDevCo’s Annual Report 2025 is now published. We care about improving lives by increasing the incomes of rural communities, producing nutritious food and increasing climate resilience. We do this by investing patient capital and providing specialist advice to African agribusinesses that operate across the supply chain. Our portfolio of companies continued to deliver positive development impact in 2025: ↳ Formal employment rose 21%; part-time and seasonal roles by 15%. ↳ Portfolio-wide, our investees supported an estimated $691 million in additional income for low-income households (through employment income and revenues for small-scale farmers, traders, and customers). ↳ 5.3 billion locally produced eggs and over 24,700 MT of locally produced affordable, high-quality fish sold to low-income communities. This impact is underpinned by strong commercial performance: portfolio revenue reached $581m (+40% vs. 2024); EBITDA more than doubled like-for-like. Our Technical Assistance Facility trained 56,000 small-scale farmers (33% women) on climate-smart, good agricultural practices and supported more than 5,700 investee staff members (34% women) to build their capacity. Our results demonstrate that sustainable investments can generate both development impact and financial returns. Read the executive summary: https://lnkd.in/daAjjxWG Link to full report (pdf): https://lnkd.in/diP7Fhrh

Investment Analyst — Cape Town, South Africa Join our Southern Africa Regional Investment Team and work across the full deal cycle; supporting sourcing, due diligence, structuring, execution and portfolio management. You will gain hands-on deal experience while contributing to Africa's agricultural transformation. We're looking for a finance professional with strong analytical skills and a passion for impact investing and sustainable agribusiness. If that sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you. See the link below to apply: https://lnkd.in/eE5VDgZT 

Planting Naturals Group (PN) is the largest organic palm oil producer in West Africa and the largest supplier of organic palm oil to Europe. Fully committed to sustainable production, PN sources 100% organic produce from the largest certified smallholder network globally — around 10,000 farmers across Sierra Leone — and from its own plantations, ensuring traceability from farm to market for every customer it supplies. Since 2025, AgDevCo's Technical Assistance Facility has been working with the Planting Naturals team to strengthen farmer capacity, deepen inclusion, and build the systems that protect smallholder access to high-value markets. As farmers become more productive and resilient, the benefits flow through to their households and the value chains they supply. By end-2025, that work had reached over 5,700 smallholders through Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and organic practices training, with 923 farmers joining Village Savings and Loan Associations to build financial resilience. In a sector where women are often underrepresented, 45% of field day and VSLA participants were women. And with European market access increasingly tied to verified supply chain data under the EU Deforestation Regulation, a new digital traceability platform — now live across more than 7,200 farmers — is the infrastructure that keeps this smallholder network connected to the markets they supply. As Planting Naturals CEO Jan Hein de Vroe put it: "Most importantly, it empowers smallholders to participate in verified deforestation-free markets, securing their livelihoods while protecting forests." Read the project spotlight report here: https://lnkd.in/eSNjNRTv

Our team recently visited Victory Group on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya — seeing how our investment is translating into real impact on the ground. Victory Group farms Nile tilapia at scale, supplying several thousand mama samakis (female traders) who sell fish throughout the country. What stood out wasn't just the scale of operations, it was the ecosystem being built around it: ↳ 2,000+ full-time equivalent roles in Kenya and Rwanda ↳ 10,000+ (74% women) of market traders earning daily incomes ↳ 2.5m+ nutritious fish sold per month into low- and middle-income communities  ↳ Victory Group supports local aqua feed milling, purchasing close to 35,000 MT of feed per annum from the likes of SamakGro, a joint venture between Victory Group and MaximAgri With our recent $15m follow-on investment, Victory Group is entering its next chapter: scaling production across Lake Victoria in Kenya and Lake Kivu in Rwanda, and reaching more communities with affordable, nutritious protein.