From left to right: Craig Irvine, group CEO of Irvine’s Africa; Brian Lever, chairman of AGT Foods; Désiré N’zi, CFO for Africa and the Middle East at Bühler Group; Marvin Nii Adom Armah, senior account manager at Farmerline; and moderator Bongani Bingwa.
Heat-stable protein, fish farming in Côte d’Ivoire and technology to track the movement of food throughout the production chain. These are some of the untapped business opportunities in Africa’s agriculture and food sector identified by a panel of industry players during Standard Bank’s Africa Unlocked conference that took place in Cape Town this week.
In the meat sector, a heat-stable form of protein could be a lucrative product, according to Craig Irvine, Group CEO of poultry company Irvine’s Africa. “One of the biggest challenges that we have is lack of refrigeration and a lack of power infrastructure. So if you find some sort of heat stable, long shelf life type product, that will be a real winner,” he said.
Fish farming presents a significant opportunity in Côte d’Ivoire, as highlighted by Désiré N’zi, CFO for Africa and the Middle East at food processing equipment maker Bühler Group. He explained that the country consumes about 800,000 tonnes of fish annually, with around 80% being imported. (Read more: Boom ahead for African fish farming amid surging protein demand)
Marvin Nii Adom Armah, a senior account manager at Ghana-based Farmerline, pointed to traceability technology that enables the tracking of food products through all stages of production, processing, and distribution. Traceability is becoming increasingly crucial for consumers and regulators. Armah noted the growing pressure on companies to prove that their ingredients are not sourced from recently deforested lands or contributing to forest degradation. The European Union’s new deforestation regulations come into effect later this year. (Read more: By uncovering the story behind their products, these African companies are boosting sales)
Earlier in the conversation, Brian Lever, chairman of AGT Foods, a major exporter of popcorn, explained how they have also found success with mung beans, a crop that wasn’t widely produced in South Africa and Botswana. “Maybe 8-10 years ago, one of my sons walked into my office and said, ‘I want to do a trial with mung beans’. I said, ‘Where are we going with these things?’ He said, ‘We’ll send them to Asia, India, China.’ I said, ‘Okay let’s do a trial.’ And within three years, we were up to shipping 20,000 tonnes a year from nothing.” He noted that because his company processes and properly packages the mung beans, they are able to sell them at $300-$400 a tonne more than producers in countries like Tanzania and Mozambique that don’t follow these practices.
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