Last week, Noah Elhardt, Operations Manager at Beer Shéba Natural Foods, joined the AFS Forum 2025 in Dakar.
While much of the conversation stayed at a high level, a few clear trends stood out:
🔹 SMEs in the spotlight → “SME” was the buzzword. Direct investment in SMEs is seen as essential to driving growth in agri-food value chains.
🔹 Evolving role of NGOs & institutions → More players are shifting from purely grant-making to direct investment models.
🔹 Meat & livestock opportunities → Rising demand, fueled by population and income growth, highlights huge potential in efficiency gains, meat processing, and market linkages.
🔹 Agri-food processing gap → Identified as one of Africa’s biggest unmet needs. Infrastructure remains a hurdle, but also an area ripe for innovation and impact.
At AlphaSeeds, these insights strengthen our conviction: supporting impactful SMEs and building resilient local value chains is the way to unlock sustainable growth and transformation.
