Twiga Foods has today launched “Twiga Fresh” a subsidiary that will focus on “modern and commercial farming, to help supply informal retailers and urban consumers with lower cost, better quality and safe food”. Twiga has over the past few years been working to solve the problem of rising costs of food in Urban areas.
Close to 60% of household expenditure across major cities in Africa goes to food. And the last few months have been particularly difficult for the retail business, and for consumers as disposable income has taken a beating from both the COVID pandemic and the increasing commodity inflation caused by the war in Ukraine.
There’s also very limited investment in revolutionising the productivity and modernisation of food production in Africa, which is leading to a significant growth in the importation of basic food, making food security an increasingly elusive goal.
Twiga Foods believes its $10M investment in Twiga Fresh in Kenya, will scale the efficient production of domestic horticultural staples like Tomatoes, Onions, Watermelon, while significantly lowering the cost. This will be one of the largest single horticultural farms in Kenya, focused solely on the domestic market.
Twiga says in the long term, Twiga Fresh will be funded through debt partnership with Financial Institutions that focus on primary agriculture and food security.
The company says that for specific value chains that are already locally well-established and efficient i.e. things like bananas, Twiga will continue to work with small-scale farmers in addressing the challenge of food security.
What they said:
“We will continue to run the B2B e-commerce business under Twiga, focused on building a one-stop supply chain solution for informal retailers, delivering both Twiga and non-Twiga owned products. Twiga Fresh, in addition to our growing range of private label products, will ensure we drive growth in customer numbers and broaden the basket size by offering quality produce at a discount against prevailing market prices,” said Peter Njonjo, CEO and Co-Founder of Twiga.
“The commodity driven volatility in the world today is causing an unprecedented level of food inflation across the world. In Africa, we can least afford this disruption, and that is why we are excited about the imminent impact our technology-enabled supply chain will have in reducing the cost of food,” he added.
To launch the Twiga Fresh line of products, the company says it will sample one million Kilograms of fresh produce to customers under a 21-day promotion called “Bidhaa Freshi na Safi” that commences on the 23rd of May 2022. The company says it will deliver the produce at no cost to the door of every retailer who participates across the sixteen cities and towns they operate in Kenya.
