Twiga Foods was a B2B agricultural supply chain platform founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke. Njonjo, a former commercial director at East African Breweries Limited (EABL), and Brooke, a British entrepreneur who had worked in African agriculture, set out to solve one of East Africa's most entrenched problems: the chaotic, inefficient supply chain connecting smallholder farmers to the millions of informal retail vendors - mama mbogas and kiosk owners - who sell fresh produce in Kenyan cities. Their vision attracted more than $150 million in venture capital from investors including Goldman Sachs, the International Finance Corporation, and Creadev, making Twiga one of the most heavily funded startups in Kenyan history. Its subsequent near-collapse in 2023 became an equally significant case study in the limits of venture capital models applied to African agricultural logistics.
The original thesis was straightforward: Kenya's agricultural supply chain involved too many intermediaries. A tomato farmer in Murang'a might sell to a local broker, who sold to a regional aggregator, who sold to a wholesaler at Nairobi's Wakulima Market, who sold to a retailer. Each intermediary added cost and delay. By the time produce reached a mama mboga's stall, it had passed through four or five hands, with cumulative margins of 50 to 100 percent and significant spoilage. Twiga proposed to connect farmers directly to vendors through a mobile ordering platform, using its own fleet of trucks and a network of collection and distribution points across Nairobi.
Early traction was promising. Twiga processed thousands of orders daily, and the model attracted international attention as a template for technology-driven agricultural development. In 2019, the company raised a $30 million Series B led by Goldman Sachs' merchant banking division - a remarkable endorsement for a Nairobi-based agricultural logistics company. A $30 million Series C followed in 2021, led by Creadev (the investment arm of the Mulliez family, which owns Auchan and Decathlon), with participation from the IFC and other investors.
But the unit economics never worked as planned. Fresh produce logistics in Nairobi is brutally expensive: traffic congestion makes delivery routes unpredictable, the informal vendors Twiga served operated on razor-thin margins and were price-sensitive to a degree that left little room for Twiga's own margin, and spoilage rates for fresh produce remained high despite the shortened supply chain. The company was burning through capital faster than it could build a sustainable margin structure. A former employee estimated that Twiga was losing money on the majority of its fresh produce deliveries.
In 2023, the crisis became public. Twiga undertook massive layoffs, cutting hundreds of staff. Njonjo stepped down as CEO. The company pivoted sharply away from fresh produce - the very category that had defined its mission - toward distributing fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) like cooking oil, flour, and soap, which offered better margins and simpler logistics. The pivot was an implicit admission that the original vision of disrupting Kenya's fresh produce supply chain through a technology platform had collided with the physical realities of perishable goods logistics in a low-margin market.
Twiga's trajectory carries broader lessons for the Kenyan Silicon Savannah and African tech generally. It raised questions about whether venture capital's growth-at-all-costs model is compatible with agricultural supply chains in African markets, where margins are thin, infrastructure is unreliable, and the informal sector's flexibility and low overhead are formidable competitive advantages. The Goldman Sachs investment, celebrated at the time as validation of African agritech, looked less shrewd in retrospect. Twiga demonstrated that digital platforms could coordinate complex logistics, but coordination alone could not overcome the fundamental cost structure of moving tomatoes through Nairobi traffic.
See Also
Sources
- Kazeem, Yinka. "Twiga Foods Has Raised $50 Million to Fix Kenya's Broken Food Supply Chain." Quartz Africa, November 6, 2019.
- Bright, Jake. "Twiga Foods Lays Off Staff and Pivots Business Model After Cash Crunch." TechCrunch, August 2023.
- International Finance Corporation. "Twiga Foods: Connecting Farmers to Vendors in Kenya." IFC Case Study, 2020.
- Adegoke, Yinka. "The Rise and Struggles of Twiga Foods Show the Limits of VC-Backed Agritech in Africa." Rest of World, September 2023.