The Nutritious Food Financing Facility is an impact-first debt fund that backs small businesses producing nutritious foods for low-income earners across Africa. The fund launched in 2023 as a joint initiative of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, or GAIN, and impact investor Incofin.
Investors include the government of the Netherlands, the Eleanor Crook Foundation, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the US Agency for International Development. The blended finance fund invests between up to $1 million and now has eight portfolio companies.
Scaling up
The fund’s newest additions have been operational for two decades and are ready to ramp production. Kenya’s Soy Africa provides fortified flour and pre-cooked meals for low-income consumers and vulnerable populations across East Africa.
Tanzania’s Mkuza Chicks is a vertically integrated family-owned poultry business supplying chicks to over 2,000 mostly female smallholder farmers. Rainbow Haulage also from Tanzania aggregates farm produce like maize, sorghum and soybeans from cooperatives and commercial farms and sells them to offtakers, including Tanzania’s National Food Reserve, the World Food Program, and Africa Improved Foods, a public-private partnership of the government of Rwanda, CDC Group and others tackling malnutrition.
