"Rooted in Africa, Built for the World"

Cassava is Africa's largest food crop by volume and its most under-monetised trade asset. The continent grows roughly two-thirds of the world's cassava roots, yet it barely registers in the global trade of cassava-derived products — starch, flour, sweeteners, ethanol — that now support a multi-billion-dollar processing economy dominated almost entirely by Thailand, Vietnam, and China. This is the gum arabic story, the cashew story, and the shea story again: raw abundance at o

An Africa Brew Brief Investigation Crack open a can of Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Bite into a Haribo gummy bear. Take a vitamin capsule. Apply a cosmetic serum. In all likelihood, a fine, off-white powder harvested by hand from thorny acacia trees in one of the world's most conflict-scarred regions made it possible. It is called gum arabic, and it is the invisible thread tying Western supermarket shelves to the Sahel — a 200,000-square-mile belt of semi-arid land stretching across S

Africa Brew Brief | Investigative Edition | RIC Brands* --- The Premise: A Noble Cause or a New Form of Control? In the polished corridors of Brussels, a regulatory revolution is underway. Policymakers, dressed in the language of climate justice and biodiversity protection, have constructed a wall around the European Union's most lucrative agricultural import markets. The wall goes by several names — EUDR, BTOM, CBAM — each carrying the veneer of environmental responsibility.

Africa Brew Brief | RIC Brands There is a quiet revolution happening on the Lagos–London corridor. It does not involve a new aircraft type, a route announcement, or a frequent flyer rebrand. It happens every evening as a Boeing 777 or 787 Dreamliner lifts off from Murtala Muhammed International Airport and a cabin crew member walks the aisle with a trolley carrying jollof rice, egusi soup, pounded yam, and pepper-spiced grilled chicken. Air Peace, Nigeria's largest airline, h

**Africa Brew Brief | RIC Brands Intelligence Series** --- ## What Is Zobo? Zobo is a tea native to West Africa made from the hibiscus plant — specifically the roselle variety (*Hibiscus sabdariffa*) — with the addition of fruits and spices. It is usually consumed cold and has a tangy, rich flavour. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zobo_(drink)) The drink's base ingredient is the dried calyx of the hibiscus flower, which is boiled in water to extract its deep crimson

Africa's Largest Origin Roaster: The African Coffee Roasters Story and What It Means for the Continent How a Kenyan EPZ facility is rewriting the economics of global coffee — one roasted bag at a time --- ## The Premise: A Broken Industry Ripe for Disruption Coffee is the world's second most traded commodity. The global industry generates $200 billion in revenue annually, yet less than 10 percent of that income flows back to the countries where the beans are grown. For decade

Africa Brew Brief | RIC Brands Intelligence Series --- There is a crop growing across West Africa's northern savannahs that should be making people rich. It is bright red, high in lycopene, consumed daily in hundreds of millions of kitchens, and traded globally in a market worth over $12 billion annually. Nigeria alone produces an average of 2.3 million metric tonnes of it every year — more than 65 percent of all the tomatoes grown across West Africa. And yet, every year, Nig

Africa Brew Brief | RIC Brands Intelligence Series* --- ## Introduction: A Continent Sitting on a Fortune There is a product growing along thousands of kilometres of African coastline — from the shores of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire in the west, through Tanzania and Kenya in the east, down to Mozambique in the south — that is generating billions of dollars in global trade every year. And almost none of that value is being captured on the continent where significant volumes of the

| Africa Brew Brief | RIC Brands* --- Kenya grows some of the finest coffee on earth. Its volcanic soils, equatorial altitude, and generations of smallholder knowledge have produced a cup so distinctive — bright-acidic, full-bodied, with notes of blackcurrant, citrus, and berry — that it commands a premium in virtually every major specialty market on the planet. And yet, for decades, the commercial machinery around that coffee — the negotiations, the sourcing trips, the deal-

Africa has cows. Tens of millions of them. The continent holds some of the world's largest livestock populations, stretching from the highlands of Ethiopia and the great plains of Tanzania to the pastoral belts of Nigeria's north and the dairy farms of Kenya's rift valley. And yet every year, Africa spends billions of dollars importing powdered milk — a product it has every natural capacity to produce itself — from factories in the Netherlands, New Zealand, France, and Irelan

An Africa Brew Brief Deep Investigative Report | RIC Brands* --- Prologue: The Tree That Built Empires Nobody Asked Africa to Build There is a tree standing across the forests of West and Central Africa that has done more for the world economy than almost any other plant in human history. It has lubricated the machines of the Industrial Revolution. It has foamed your soap, fried your crisps, conditioned your hair, and fuelled cargo ships crossing the Indian Ocean. It has been

A Case Study in Agricultural Value Extraction, Processing Hegemony, and Africa's Fight to Take Back Its Nut Africa grows more than 60% of the world's cashew nuts. Vietnam grows less than 10% of what it processes. Yet Vietnam, not Africa, commands the global cashew economy — exporting $4.37 billion worth of processed kernels in 2024 while Africa ships raw nuts across the ocean for a fraction of the return. This is not a story of market dynamics. It is a story of structural ext

How West Africa's most populous nation is poised to rewrite the global coffee map — if it dares* --- There is a particular cruelty in irony that Nigeria knows well. A nation of 220 million people — the largest consumer market on the African continent, a country whose traders once moved commodities across trade routes long before the word "logistics" existed — imports the overwhelming majority of the coffee it drinks. Instant sachets. Shelf-stable blends roasted in Europe. Cof

Introduction: A Drink as Old as the Continent Long before Champagne graced European tables or sake defined Japanese ceremony, palm wine was flowing across Africa. Tapped directly from the raffia, oil, or coconut palm, this naturally fermented sap has been central to African social, spiritual, and ceremonial life for millennia. It has sealed marriages, opened negotiations, honoured ancestors, and welcomed harvests. Yet despite its deep cultural roots and a global market alread

How the RTD Coffee Revolution Is Passing Africa By — And What It Will Take to Change That --- Africa grows some of the world's most celebrated coffee. Ethiopia's Yirgacheffe. Rwanda's Bourbon. Kenya's AA. Uganda's Robusta. The continent supplies approximately 12% of the world's coffee by volume, with Ethiopia alone ranking among the top five global producers. Yet when a consumer reaches for a chilled cold brew at a London Pret, a Tokyo 7-Eleven, or a New York Whole Foods, the

Africa's Bitter Medicine: The Continent That Grows the Cure but Buys the Drug --- Africa carries the heaviest disease burden of any region on earth. It accounts for 25% of the global disease burden despite holding just 18% of the world's population. Of all the diseases that define that burden, none is more concentrated on the continent than malaria. In 2023, there were an estimated 263 million malaria cases worldwide, with 94% of them occurring in the WHO African Region. Mala

As the United Nations declares 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer, Africa's female agricultural workforce — long invisible to policy, capital, and credit — is stepping into the light. The question is no longer whether women can lead African agriculture. It is whether the systems built around them will finally catch up.* --- There is a woman in the highlands of Rwanda who wakes before the equatorial sun has decided what it wants to be. Her name is not important to

*An Africa Brew Brief Investigative Report** --- There is a question that sits at the centre of Africa's development crisis, one that economists dance around, that diplomats soften with language about "challenges," and that politicians bury beneath promises they never intend to keep. The question is simple, and it is devastating: **Why, more than six decades after independence, do nearly 600 million Africans still live without electricity?** This is not a question about pover

How one man's conviction turned a London co-working office into West Africa's most iconic lifestyle destination — and how he refused to let the state bury his dream --- Prologue: The Making of a Standard There are builders, and then there are brand architects — people who do not simply erect structures but construct ecosystems, experiences, and expectations. Paul Onwuanibe, founder and Group CEO of Landmark Africa, belongs firmly in the second category. I have known Paul per

An Africa Brew Brief Investigative Report | RIC Brands --- Prologue: The Day a Cereal Box Changed a Continent's Breakfast In 1948, a factory opened in Springs, Gauteng — a flat, industrialised town east of Johannesburg — and began producing breakfast cereal for South African households. It was not a South African factory. It was not built with South African capital. The corn that fed it did not begin as a South African idea. The factory belonged to the Kellogg Company of Batt