East Africa Foods Raises $40 Million to Expand Produce Logistics

East Africa Foods has completed a financing package of about $40 million to expand the physical and digital systems that move fresh produce from small farms to shops. The package includes a $26 million Series B equity round led by the Private Infrastructure Development Group through InfraCo, with Oikocredit and the Dutch development bank FMO participating.

Existing shareholders ARAF, Goodwell, Africa Eats and FINCA reinvested. The wider raise also includes debt from the Schmidt Family Foundation. PIDG said the equity investment was completed after competition and regulatory clearances from COMESA, Tanzania’s Fair Competition Commission and Zanzibar’s competition authority.

Money for storage, processing and transport

The capital is intended for assets that sit between the farm gate and the retail shelf: new collection and fulfilment centres, storage, milling, curing and ripening facilities, and a fleet of long-haul trucks. East Africa Foods also plans to expand the digital platform that links farmers, branches and retailers, strengthen its business in Tanzania and enter Kenya.

That distinction matters. The deal is not simply funding an ordering app. It is financing warehouses, handling facilities, vehicles and inventory systems—the less visible infrastructure that determines how much harvested food reaches a paying customer and in what condition.

A network already connecting 28,000 farmers

East Africa Foods says it sources from more than 28,000 registered smallholder farmers and supplies more than 10,000 urban retailers. It aggregates, grades, stores, processes and distributes produce, while selling some products under its Onja and Golden Banana brands.

PIDG lists the overall project cost at $38.68 million and its own equity commitment at $12 million. The public infrastructure investor says the expansion should help the company reach 100,000 smallholder farmers over the next several years. About 45% of the intended farmer beneficiaries are expected to be women.

Why the deal matters beyond the company

PIDG estimates that as much as 40% of food produced in Kenya and Tanzania is lost before it reaches consumers. It attributes much of that loss to weak aggregation, grading, storage, cooling and transport rather than to production failures in the field.

Those gaps affect both ends of the market. Farmers can be forced to accept lower prices when produce must be sold quickly, while urban retailers face irregular supply, inconsistent quality and poor traceability. Better handling and distribution do not guarantee lower food prices, but they can reduce the waste and volatility built into the journey from farm to shop.

East Africa Foods says its current network already cuts food loss by about one-third. The next investment phase targets a further one-third reduction across the network while increasing processing and logistics capacity. These figures are company and investor targets, and the results will depend on execution as the network expands.

A test of whether agri-logistics can attract commercial capital

The financing also carries a wider investment argument. Cold storage, produce handling and regional food distribution are essential services, but they have often struggled to attract enough long-term capital in African markets. PIDG and the other development investors are backing East Africa Foods as a demonstration that integrated agri-logistics can become a scalable commercial business.

For farmers, the practical test will be whether the new assets create more reliable market access and more predictable income. For retailers, it will be whether availability, quality control and traceability improve without pushing distribution costs higher. For the investors, the test is whether the model can bring in more commercial finance after this round.

What happens next

The company will now deploy the new capital across its Tanzanian network and Kenyan expansion. Alongside the physical build-out, it plans to extend climate-smart farming training and roll out the digital systems developed in Tanzania into each new market.

No detailed construction timetable or market-by-market spending breakdown was disclosed in the announcement. That leaves the pace of expansion, the exact location of new facilities and the balance between physical assets and technology as the main points to watch.

The completed raise nevertheless gives East Africa Foods a substantial pool of capital for a part of the food economy that is often underfunded: the infrastructure after harvest, where losses become lower farm income, weaker retail supply and higher costs for consumers.