The Africa Seed Investment Fund

It has been a while since my previous post. Apart from a considerable amount of travel, my energies have been fully focused on preparing for the launch of the Africa Seed Investment Fund, a $12 million investment facility to be managed by African Agricultural Capital. The facility is the brainchild of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and will offer medium to long term capital to seed businesses in eight countries in East & Southern Africa.

The African seed industry has (alongside most other agricultural sectors) been starved of investment capital. As a result, there is a significant deficit in high quality certified seed available to farmers across the region. This deficit, along with the questionable quality of this most essential of all farming inputs, is a substantial contributor to the poor agricultural productivity and efficiency endemic to the region. The Africa Seed Investment Fund offers the opportunity to seed businesses to access the capital they require in order to increase seed production volumes, seed quality and take advantage of the opportunity to commercialise new improved seed varieties - the fruits of research and development work carried out by both national and international plant breeding programmes.

The launch was held on April 2nd in Kampala. Now the hard work of identifying, researching, evaluating and negotiating investment agreements will start.