Yield Uganda Investment Fund, an agribusiness impact investment vehicle managed by Pearl Capital Partners, has struck its second deal of the year after hacking a Ugandan agriculture supply chain firm last month. The fund, alongside Danish investor Gorm Pedersen, has invested in Ugandan pelleted animal feed processing, marketing, and distribution company Kamp.

The Yield Uganda Investment Fund has announced a Shs9.5 billion aggregate investment in Kamp Group Ltd. The blended equity and debt funding was raised through a coinvestment arrangement between Yield Uganda and Gorm Pedersen 2 Holding ApS, a Danish investor. This marks the fund’s thirteenth investment in the Ugandan SME agribusiness sector.

UGANDA – Yield Uganda Investment Fund, an agribusiness impact vehicle managed by Pearl Capital Partners, has invested US$515,000 in Enimiro, a Ugandan farming platform that connects small-scale farmers to markets.

Yield Uganda Investment Fund, an agribusiness impact vehicle managed by Pearl Capital Partners, has invested $515,000 (UGX 1.814 billion) in Enimiro, a Ugandan vertical supply chain partner. This marks the fund’s first new deal this year after hacking four companies in 2021.

Food systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in Africa and Asia, face direct stress from climate-induced changes and house a large population of smallholder farmers who are dependent on their immediate environment for their livelihoods, food and nutrition.

Uganda earned $811.18m (about sh2.9 trillion) from coffee exports in the last 12 months, up from $535.93 (sh1.9 trillion) in the previous coffee year, a report by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) has said.

Despite growth in several sectors of the economy, agricultural productivity has been stagnating over the last fifteen years. There is a need to allocate more funding to boost production,” said Pozhi …

The best coffee country in the world is Ethiopia, if hundreds of professional coffee tasters are to be believed.

The two-year lockdown has made many people realise the importance of agriculture, not only to the world’s economy, but also to the individual incomes.

Women make up the majority of the world’s poor and are more reliant on natural resources for a living and this is same locally in Uganda and mostly rural communities. With Climate-related issues, such as prolonged dry seasons and floods becoming more common and threatening agricultural livelihoods and food security, women are more affected due to their critical role as food security enablers.

Resilience, agility, and adaptation are three important qualities adopted by enterprises over the past two years to support business continuity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

How we made it in Africa has interviewed many of the top entrepreneurs – both up-and-coming and established – operating in East Africa’s agribusiness and food industry. Here is a selection of nine businesspeople capitalising on the sector’s potential.

Comparing and assessing impact performance is critical to increasing the effectiveness of impact investing. Investors around the world are growing their capital allocations toward impact-oriented strategies, deepening their approaches to impact measurement and management, and, anecdotally, becoming progressively better aware of the variety of strategies available to influence impact results. Read More…

As governments, climate experts and campaigners gather at COP26, how are impact investors tackling the defining challenge of our era? Read More…

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Uganda suffer from lack of finance for their survival and growth. This liquidity emergency, according to Ian Nvula, an expert in capital markets and founder of T.E Markets, has motivated struggling start-ups to find alternative financing sources different from conventional bank lending, writes Nelson Mandela Muhoozi. Read More…

For most children, their worst nightmare would be losing a parent, a best friend, or their favourite toy. Strangely for me — perhaps because all those were intact — my greatest fear was the world becoming a desert — a hot, dry wasteland. Read More…

The Yield Uganda Investment Fund recently announced an investment of $1.8 million in Sekajja Agro Farms (SAF), a Ugandan poultry business that operates a commercial chicken farm and abattoir as well as a chicken feed manufacturing unit. Jeanette Clark spoke to David Wangolo, investment manager at Pearl Capital Partners – which manages the Yield Uganda…

Yield Uganda Investment Fund, an agribusiness impact vehicle managed by Pearl Capital Partners, has struck its third deal in as many months by investing UGX6.79 billion ($1.8 million) in Sekajja Agro Farms Ltd, in a blend of equity and long-term debt. This marks the fund’s tenth investment in the Ugandan agribusiness sector and the third…

UGANDA – Sekajja Agro Farms Limited (SAF), a Ugandan based poultry firm, has received UGX 6.79 billion (US$ 1.8 million) blended equity and long-term debt from Pearl Capital Partners’ managed fund, the Yield Uganda Investment. According to Pearl Capital, this is the fund’s tenth investment in the Ugandan agribusiness sector, to include US$1.54 million investment…

You reap what you sow,” a man who was buying seeds at container village was heard muttering. This is quite an old saying. However, for easier interpretation, you cannot sow oranges and harvest mangoes. If you sow poor quality seeds, you certainly will have a poor harvest. “I am going to plant this one seed…

Agriculture-focused private equity firm Pearl Capital Partners, manager of the Yield Uganda Investment Fund, sees growth potential in the cassava value chain in Uganda. The firm recently invested $2.5 million in cassava producer Pura Organic Agro Tech Ltd. The funding will be used to set up a vertically integrated cassava processing plant to produce high-quality…

Amfri Farms Ltd has secured a 1.32 million Euros, ( about Shs5.49b) investment from FCA Investments and Yield Uganda Investment Fund managed by Pearl Capital Partners. Of the investment, partially structured as convertible preference shares, 60 per is convertible into equity. The funding aims at providing long-term ”patient capital” to Amfri Farms to enable its…

With limited access to affordable and long-term credit continuing to hinder greenfield investments in agro-processing in Uganda, collaboration among the agro-processing ecosystem players is key to unlocking new funding mechanisms. This is even more important as the Uganda Manufacturers Association (UMA) reports an up to 60% reduction in production by her members occasioned by the…

When private equity (PE) managers and investors, like Pearl Capital Partners and many others, are considering investing in companies, we tend to focus on the hard cold numbers. Numbers around the market, strategy, cash flow and the first 100 days postinvestment. So do owners and CEOs of the companies that we seek to invest in.…

In the 25 years since Clayton Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation,” much has been written about the benefits of shaking up established business practices. Even before the current pandemic, there was a growing recognition that our food systems, too, needed to be reimagined. Today’s food systems must feed 7.8 billion people without compromising future…

The sector has however seen underperformance over recent years in comparison to other sectors within the economy due to the low level of value addition through processing facilities and also a lack of commercial private enterprises, thereby resulting in weak employment creation. Read More

In 2004, we set up African Agricultural Capital (AAC) with the ambition of stimulating investment inagricultural businesses in East Africa. AAC was one of the first agricultural impact investmentvehicles in the region. It inspired others and we learned many lessons along the way. I would like tocommend most highly the shareholders, Gatsby Charitable Foundation and…

Gatsby Africa, Pearl Capital Partners and Onward Resources International have released the AfricanAgricultural Capital (AAC) closure of fund report. The launch of the report was held virtually on the 28thOctober 2020 and presented to different stakeholders with interests in impact investing. Read More

Pearl Capital Partners is a fund manager that invests in agribusiness enterprises in East Africa. The firm has offices in Kampala, Uganda and Nairobi, Kenya. Its most recent fund, the Yield Uganda Investment Fund, has made seven investments in Uganda worth over €5.8 million. These include: Sesaco – a processor of soy products; Chemiphar – an…

In 2004, private equity firm Pearl Capital Partners set up African Agricultural Capital (AAC) with the ambition of stimulating investment in agricultural businesses in East Africa. The fund was formally closed in 2019. AAC was one of the first agricultural impact investment vehicles in the region. Investors collectively committed $9 million in AAC, which the fund fully…

This edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets focuses on how markets can bring us closer to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. SOCO 2020 offers a detailed analysis of the major global trends in agri-food markets and trade to identify how to reap economic, environmental and social gains and spur overall development.…

Why does CDC care about SMEs? Formal SMEs contribute up to 40% of national income in emerging economies, according to the World Bank, yet they suffer from a lack of access to finance. These businesses are critically important if we are to support economies across the continent to not only recover from the COVID pandemic but…

The World Bank, in its Global Economic Prospect 2021, has said Uganda’s agricultural sector will be among the most resilient sector in 2021. Uganda, the World Bank said, will be among the five countries in sub Saharan Africa that will experience the least contraction in agriculture. This, according to the World Bank, implies that agriculture will support…

The partnership between Microsoft and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), enabled through the Microsoft 4Afrika initiative, will enhance AGRA’s digital transformation agenda as it works to improve food security for 30 million farming households across 11 countries by 2021. Microsoft has, together with the AGRA, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to co-create…

This year’s Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR) focuses on Feeding Africa’s Cities by assessing the opportunities, challenges and policies required to enable African farmers and agribusinesses to serve the rapidly growing urban food markets. The report seeks to find ways for smallholder farmers to drive food security, rural prosperity, and inclusive economic growth. The 2020…

Private equity is an alternative investment class and consists of capital that is not listed on a public exchange. Private equity is composed of funds and investors that directly invest in private companies, or that engage in buyouts of public companies, resulting in the delisting of public equity. Institutional and retail investors provide the capital for private equity, and the capital can…

The Covid-19 pandemic has destroyed livelihoods and scattered millions of jobs around the world. The International Labor Organization estimates that nearly 1.6 billion people’s livelihoods are now threatened with the greatest impact being felt by those in the informal sector. However, the pandemic has also brought to the fore numerous opportunities in Agribusiness that the…