The food gap: what the market has been missing
November 19, 2025
For most of the last decade, agri-tech in Africa was treated as a development story. Interesting at the margins, structurally important, but not quite a commercial investment category that institutional capital could engage with seriously. The narrative centred on impact metrics and subsistence farming rather than on returns, scalable infrastructure, and the commercial dynamics of a food system serving a rapidly urbanising population of over a billion people.
That framing is changing, and the data reflects it. Africa's continental food market is projected to expand from $280 billion to $1 trillion by 2030, with agrifood tech investment in developing countries increasing 63% year over year in 2024, and 600% from ten years ago. That is not a development trend. That is a market forming at speed, and the investors building positions now are doing so before institutional consensus catches up to the structural reality.
The problem is not production
Africa produces enough food to feed itself. The problem is what happens between production and consumption.
Post-harvest loss across sub-Saharan Africa exceeds 30% of total crop production, representing more than $4 billion in value annually, with the FAO and World Bank's "Missing Food" report placing the broader supply chain figure at approximately 37% of total agricultural output. That loss does not happen in the field. It happens in the chain: inadequate cold storage, unreliable logistics, fragmented market access, and the absence of working capital financing that would allow produce to move efficiently from harvest to sale.
The consequence is a food system that is productive at the farm level and chronically inefficient at every stage after it. Producers cannot get fair price discovery because they lack market access. Buyers cannot source reliably at scale because supply chains are fragmented and opaque. Finance cannot flow to the agricultural sector at reasonable cost because the data infrastructure to verify collateral and assess credit does not exist at scale. Each failure compounds the others.
This is precisely the kind of structural problem that rewards a different investment lens. The opportunity is not in the crops. It is in the systems that move them.
The physical backbone comes first
The agri-tech investment conversation has focused heavily on the digital layer: platforms, apps, data tools, mobile market access. That layer matters. But digital tools sitting on top of broken physical infrastructure do not solve the problem. The post-harvest loss happens in the physical chain, and that is where the most significant and most underinvested capital gap sits.
Think about what the equivalent conversation looks like in other consumer-facing sectors. In fashion and apparel, the most durable investment opportunity has not been in the retail layer. It has been in the operational backbone: textile mills, manufacturing facilities, logistics hubs, warehousing, and the backward integration that makes a consumer economy function at scale. The businesses that built those physical assets early in high-growth markets created structural positions that digital-only competitors could not replicate.
The same logic applies to food. The physical backbone of a functioning food system, cold chain storage, grain handling and processing facilities, distribution logistics, agri-processing zones, is where produce is lost or preserved, where value is extracted or destroyed, and where the capital requirement is largest and most persistent. Cold chain infrastructure across Africa is projected to grow from $10.88 billion in 2024 to $14.85 billion by 2029, and the Nigerian government alone has committed $538 million to Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones with projected productivity gains of over 60%. McKinsey estimates that sub-Saharan Africa requires $8 billion in improved storage and $65 billion in irrigation investment to realise its agricultural potential. These are not marginal infrastructure line items. They are the foundational layer that determines whether the digital tools above them can function at all.
The investment case for food systems in Africa is therefore most compelling when it combines both layers: the physical infrastructure that moves and preserves produce, and the digital and financial tools that make that physical chain efficient, financeable, and legible to capital. Neither layer alone closes the gap.
Why the window is open now
Three forces have converged to make this a credible institutional investment category in a way it was not five years ago.
Food security has become a policy mandate, not just a development goal. The post-COVID disruption to global supply chains, the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on grain and fertiliser availability, and the accelerating effects of climate volatility on agricultural production have pushed food security from the development finance agenda onto the national security agenda of governments across Africa, the Gulf, and beyond. Government mandates, procurement programmes, and processing zone investments are actively creating demand for the infrastructure that food system businesses provide. That policy tailwind changes the risk profile of investments in this sector materially.
The technology layer has matured. Mobile-first platforms, satellite monitoring, IoT-enabled supply chain verification, and digital market access tools have moved from pilot programmes to operational scale across multiple markets. Kenya alone saw a 62% year-on-year increase in agrifood tech funding in the first half of 2024, with South Africa on track for 60% of its farmers to adopt digital agri-tech solutions by 2025 through mobile platforms providing market access, weather data, and microloans. These are not experimental technologies. They are operational platforms with real user bases, real transaction volumes, and verifiable performance data.
The finance gap is being named at the highest levels. Private investment in African agriculture, including private equity and venture capital combined, represented just 3% of total private funding in 2022, well below the global average of 10%. Development financing directed to African agriculture in the same year stood at just 7%, against a global average of 12%. The Paris Peace Forum's ATLAS initiative, launched at Davos in January 2024, specifically called on funders to double the current $49 billion in annual agricultural investment in Africa by 2030. When the World Economic Forum is naming the gap, and governments are committing billions to close it, the direction of capital flow is not speculative.
Where the investment opportunity actually sits
Despite growing momentum, agri-tech currently attracts only around 4% of total venture capital investment across Africa. Combined with the PE and broader private investment figure of 3% of total private funding, the picture is consistent: a sector contributing between 15 and 35% of GDP across most sub-Saharan African economies, employing the majority of the working population, and receiving a fraction of the private capital that its economic weight warrants. That is not a mature market with rational pricing. It is an underinvested one with structural reasons why the gap persists, and those reasons are now tractable in a way they were not a decade ago.
The technology infrastructure to build scalable food system platforms exists. The policy environment is actively supportive. DFI and development capital willing to structure blended finance vehicles for agricultural investment has grown substantially. And the commercial case, anchored in a food market growing toward a trillion dollars, is no longer a development argument. It is an investment argument, grounded in the same infrastructure logic that has produced durable returns in financial systems, logistics, and consumer economies across other high-growth markets.
The specific lens Kingson applies
Kingson's interest in food systems is not a thematic overlay on a generalist strategy. It is one of three foundational themes that reflect a considered view on where the infrastructure gaps in high-growth economies are largest and most consequential.
Within food systems, what we look for is specific. We are not backing commodity businesses or primary production. We are backing the platforms and physical infrastructure that make food systems more efficient, more financeable, and more resilient: supply chain platforms with verifiable data layers, cold chain and processing infrastructure that reduces loss at the physical level, and digital finance tools built for the working capital cycles of agricultural businesses. The businesses we find most compelling are those where the investment creates a structural position in how food moves from production to consumption, not simply a faster or cheaper version of what already exists.
The food gap is real, quantified, and closing slowly. The capital forming around it is early. That combination is where Kingson looks.
Kingson publishes perspectives to help allocators think more carefully about capital deployment in high-growth markets. This piece represents our considered view, not investment advice. For allocator enquiries, contact advisory@kingsoncapital.com