"Rooted in Africa, Built for the World"

The Empire Hiding in Plain Sight Every time someone in Lusaka, Blantyre, Maputo, or Mbabane stirs sugar into their tea, there's a reasonable chance that sugar was grown, milled, and sold to them by a company ultimately answering to a boardroom in uMhlanga — which answers to a holding company in London — which answers, in the end, to one family's trust in the United Kingdom, endowed by a Canadian bread baron nearly seventy years ago. That company is Illovo. Its parent is ABF S

Two exchanges. Zero African chairs. A $50 billion import bill for the continent that invented the crop.* --- There is a room — two rooms, technically, seven time zones apart — where the price of coffee gets decided every trading day. One sits in lower Manhattan, inside the Intercontinental Exchange. The other sits in London, the descendant of a market born in 17th-century coffee houses that would later spawn the London Stock Exchange itself. Between them, these two rooms set

A RIC Brands Africa Agribusiness Intelligence Report *Published by Africa Brew Brief | RIC Brands Research & Intelligence Division* --- THE STATE OF PLAY Africa is the world's fastest-growing consumer market — 1.7 billion people, a combined GDP of $10.8 trillion at purchasing power parity, and a single-market framework in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) that promises to reshape the global trade order. Yet business operators on the ground still face a daily re

A Deep Dive Into the Continent's Grain Sovereignty, Trade Power, and the Rise of Indigenous Alternatives* --- ## THE BREADBASKET QUESTION: NOT ONE ANSWER, BUT A CONTINENT IN MOTION When the phrase "breadbasket of Africa" is used, it has historically pointed in different directions depending on the era, the crop, and the political lens. South Africa, with its sophisticated commercial farming sector and the fertile Western Cape, long held the title in the colonial imagination.

By RIC Brands | Africa Brew Brief | Africa Trade & Investment Intelligence --- Introduction: A Deal That Redrew the Map In January 2019, The Coca-Cola Company completed one of its most strategically significant acquisitions on the African continent — the full purchase of Chi Limited, a Nigerian food and beverage company born in Lagos in 1980. The deal, which had been staged over three years beginning with a 40% minority stake in 2016, sent a clear signal to the global investm

By RIC Brands | Africa Trade & Investment Intelligence --- There is a particular kind of confidence that belongs only to nations that have never been broken. Ethiopia carries that confidence in its bones. It is the oldest independent country in Africa, one of the oldest civilisations on Earth, and today — with over $18.6 billion in foreign direct investment attracted over the past five years, a state airline that just won Africa's best, and the continent's wealthiest man bett