About Pearl Capital Partners

Who we are & what we do

Pearl Capital Partners

Pearl Capital Partners (PCP)  www.pearlcapital.net is an impact investment fund management business specializing in providing risk capital to agriculture-related businesses in East and Southern Africa. PCP has been operating in East Africa since 2005 and has managed four Agri-focused Funds with a portfolio of over 48 investments.

Who We Are

Pearl Capital Partners (PCP) is an independent Impact investment fund manager specializing in providing risk capital to small and medium sized enterprises (SMES) operating in the agriculture value chain in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Our Vision

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide medium to long term capital to ambitious entrepreneurs whose aim is to build sustainable and profitable agribusinesses while generating significant and measurable social and developmental impact.

Our Mission

To create an environment in which entrepreneurs can access funding for expansion, growth, and general economic development in the region.

Our story

We are an independent agriculture investment management firm with offices in Kampala and Nairobi. We administer portfolio management on behalf of Yield Uganda Investment Fund, a €20 million agricultural fund that was launched with initial €12 million  in 2017, and an additional commitment of  8 million in 2019, bringing the Yield Uganda Investment Fund total fund size to €20 million, African Agricultural Capital Fund (AACF), a $25 million agricultural fund that was launched in September 2011, the African Seed Investment Fund (ASIF), a $12 million seed fund formed in August 2010 and our original investment company, African Agricultural Capital Ltd (AAC), formed in 2005 with $ 9 million in equity subscriptions.

PCP’s original investment company African Agricultural Capital Ltd (AAC) was established in 2005 by Gatsby, Rockefeller and Volksvermogen of Belgium to address the “funding gap”: a lack of small business finance holding back a large number of high-potential enterprises in Africa. The social impact and potential returns from addressing this funding gap is most pronounced in agriculture.

The investors capitalised AAC to channel finance to agricultural enterprises, whose growth could catalyse the development of the value chains they operate in, delivering high social impact and strong financial returns, and encouraging future sector specific investments, by demonstrating to the private sector that such investments can be profitable.

We invest between US$250,000 and US$2 million in growing agricultural small and medium-sized businesses in East Africa, typically using a combination of equity, quasi-equity, equity-related and debt investments, delivering relative to our sector, top quartile financial returns to our investors, while creating significant positive social impact on smallholder farmers.

Initially and in accordance with direction from our investors, our investments focused mainly on supporting businesses with significant social impact rather than creating market-leading financial returns. In recent years and in light of positive financial returns from earlier investments, our focus shifted towards considering potential investments equally along social and financial lines.

To date, the Yield Fund, has made fifteen investments in Uganda worth over EURO 16m. These include: Sesaco – an agro-processing company, processing and manufacturing soy based products; CECOFA – a primary processor and exporter of coffee organized through a smallholder farmers’ co-operative structure, Chemiphar – an internationally accredited analytical lab, Raintree Farms – a value-added processor of moringa, Pristine Foods – a pasteurized liquid egg processing company, Clarke Farm Ltd – a company specializing in the production and processing of fine specialty washed Robusta coffee for the premium export market and Naseco (1996) Ltd- a company that produces, processes and distributes certified seeds in Uganda and is growing exports across the regional East African community, Pura Organic Agro Tech Ltd, an agro processing company focused on the cassava value chain, Sekajja Agro Farms Limited (SAF) is a Kampala based company whose primary business is the rearing of day-old-chicks (DOCs) until maturity and the distribution of the mature birds as live birds and dressed chicken in the informal and formal markets, respectively, AMFRI Farms is a pioneering organic farming, processing and exporting company, Enimiro is a vertical supply chain management business connecting the small holder farmers to the international buying community for three organic products; vanilla, arabica coffee and dried pineapple, with vanilla as the anchor product, Kamp Group Limited, a pelleted animal feed processing, marketing, and distribution company, Sausage King, a pioneering meat processing company specializing in value addition and processing of beef, poultry, and pork into convenient premium meat products, Newman Foods Ltd is a Kampala-based agro-processing company whose primary business is the production and marketing of branded consumer foods, Quality Milk Dairies Limited, a vertically integrated milk production, aggregation, processing, and distribution company, is run and managed principally as a family business.

Certified B Corporations are Leaders of a global movement of people using business as a force for good. They meet the highest standards of overall social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability and aspire to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. The B Corp movement is made up of over 2,000 companies in 50+ countries and 130 industries with 1 unifying goal: to redefine success in business.

2015 RATED BY THE GLOBAL IMPACT INVESTMENT RATING (GIIRS) PIONEER FUND, SHOWING OUR COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL IMPACT.