"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

An Africa Brew Brief Investigation Walk through a market in Harare, Kigali, Kisumu, or Kampala and ask for it by name, and you'll get five different answers. In Zimbabwe it's rapoko. In Zambia, kambale or lupoko. In Kenya, wimbi. In Uganda, bulo. In Ethiopia, dagussa. Nine names, one grain, one enormous missed opportunity. Rapoko is finger millet — *Eleusine coracana* — a small, hardy cereal that has fed and fortified African households for at least five thousand years, since

Africa Brew Brief | Investigative Series | --- SALIMA, MALAWI — On the eastern shore of Lake Malawi, where fishing villages give way to grassland that colonial cartographers once dismissed as marginal, a ten-thousand-square-metre factory hums through six months of frenetic activity each year. Trucks arrive loaded with fruit still warm from the field. Inside, 1,200 hands — four in ten of them women's — wash, peel, slice and dry a harvest that didn't exist as an export commodit

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

From the Elgin Valley to 60 countries — the CPG story every African agribusiness should study.* --- The Origin: Africa Named It, Africa Made It Named after Africa's savannahs, Savanna Dry cider was introduced in South Africa by the Distell Group in May 1996. [Difford's Guide](https://www.diffordsguide.com/beer-wine-spirits/4523/savanna-dry) It was not a multinational import dressed in African colours. It was conceived, crafted, and commercialised on African soil — a homegrow

A deep dive into the true traditions of growing, roasting, and drinking coffee in the land where it was born — and why that changes everything.* Published by RIC Brands · Africa Brew Brief | Tied to: Origin Cup — Ethiopia Edition | 26 June 2026 · London** --- Prologue: The Cup That Predates Civilisation Every morning, across continents, hundreds of millions of people begin their day with a ritual they understand as modern — a habit of productivity, pleasure, or both. What alm

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