Twiga Foods
Twiga Foods
About
Twiga Foods is one of East Africa’s most closely watched agritech companies — a Nairobi-based B2B distribution platform that has spent the better part of a decade trying to fix one of the continent’s most persistent structural problems: the broken, costly, and opaque supply chain that sits between African farmers and the millions of small retailers who feed urban populations.
The company was founded in 2014 by Grant Brooke and Peter Njonjo, the latter a former Coca-Cola executive whose operational background in African consumer markets shaped Twiga’s early go-to-market logic. The founding thesis was straightforward but ambitious: eliminate the layers of middlemen that inflate food prices, reduce farmer income, and make supply unpredictable for the informal kiosks and dukas that dominate last-mile retail across Kenyan cities.
Twiga’s mission has remained consistent — to build a more efficient, data-driven food and FMCG supply chain across Africa, starting with Kenya. Over time, the company has evolved from a produce-focused logistics play into a broader B2B commerce platform, adding manufactured goods alongside fresh agricultural products.
Country and Ecosystem
Kenya, and Nairobi in particular, occupies a distinctive position in the African startup landscape. The country has produced a disproportionate share of the continent’s most ambitious technology companies — from M-Pesa’s foundational influence on fintech to a new generation of agritech, healthtech, and logistics startups. Nairobi benefits from a relatively mature venture capital infrastructure, a strong pool of local and diaspora talent, and a regulatory environment that, while imperfect, has shown more openness to innovation than many regional peers. The Kenyan government’s Vision 2030 agenda and the growth of hubs such as iHub and Nairobi Garage have reinforced the city’s status as a continental technology anchor. That said, macroeconomic pressures — including currency volatility, rising cost of capital, and post-pandemic demand shifts — have tested even the most well-funded local startups in recent years. → Read the Kenya expert briefing
Product
Twiga Foods operates a technology-enabled B2B platform that connects two ends of the supply chain: on one side, smallholder farmers and FMCG manufacturers; on the other, informal retailers — the kiosks, market traders, and small grocery outlets that collectively serve the majority of urban Kenyan consumers. Vendors place orders through a mobile application or via agent networks, and Twiga handles sourcing, aggregation, quality control, and last-mile delivery. By digitising order management and using data to forecast demand, the platform aims to reduce post-harvest losses, stabilise pricing, and give small retailers access to a more reliable, competitively priced product range than traditional wholesale markets can offer. Over time, Twiga has expanded its catalogue beyond fresh produce to include packaged FMCG goods, effectively positioning itself as a one-stop digital wholesale channel for the informal retail segment.
Traction and Funding
Twiga Foods has raised significant capital across multiple rounds, establishing itself as one of the better-funded agritech and B2B commerce companies in East Africa. Investors of note have included the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Goldman Sachs, Creadev, and Jumo, among others. The company raised a widely reported Series C round in 2021, which according to contemporary coverage was in the region of $50 million, though the company has not always publicly disclosed the precise composition of its funding stack. Twiga has also experimented with embedded financial products — including working capital credit for vendors — as a mechanism to deepen platform stickiness and generate additional revenue streams. Exact active vendor counts and gross merchandise value figures have not been consistently disclosed in public filings, and according to recent ecosystem reports, the company’s unit economics have been a subject of ongoing scrutiny as it works toward sustainable profitability.
Competitive Landscape
The B2B informal retail distribution space has attracted significant attention and capital across Africa, and Twiga operates in an increasingly crowded field. In West Africa, TradeDepot and Omnibiz have built comparable models targeting Nigerian and broader West African informal retailers. MarketForce, another Nairobi-based company, pursued a similar agent-led distribution model in East Africa before undergoing significant restructuring. Wasoko — formerly Sokowatch — has been among Twiga’s most direct regional competitors, operating across multiple East African markets with a comparable mobile-first ordering and delivery proposition. Twiga’s differentiation has historically rested on its agricultural sourcing infrastructure, its relatively deep integration with Kenyan farming communities, and its brand recognition in the Nairobi market. The degree to which that differentiation translates into durable competitive advantage, particularly as better-capitalised regional and global logistics players eye the same opportunity, remains an open question in the ecosystem.
Recent Developments
The past two years have been a period of recalibration for Twiga Foods, mirroring a broader contraction across African tech that has seen several high-profile B2B commerce startups scale back operations, conduct layoffs, or pivot their models. Twiga has not been immune to these pressures. The company underwent internal restructuring, including reported reductions in headcount, as it sought to tighten its cost base and sharpen its focus on core, profitable operations. Leadership transitions have also been reported during this period. At the same time, the company has continued to iterate on its embedded finance offering and its FMCG distribution partnerships, signalling that the strategic direction — broader B2B commerce rather than pure agritech — remains intact. The operating environment in Kenya has added further complexity, with inflationary pressure on household spending affecting demand patterns among the small retailers Twiga serves.
Outlook
Twiga Foods enters the next phase of its development at an inflection point that is familiar to many late-stage African startups: the pressure to demonstrate that scale and profitability can coexist. The structural opportunity it was built to address has not diminished — informal retail still dominates Kenyan consumer markets, supply chains remain fragmented, and smallholder farmers continue to face significant income volatility. The question is whether Twiga can execute efficiently enough, and at sufficient scale, to justify its capital base and carve out a defensible position before better-resourced competitors or leaner local operators close the gap. Regional expansion, deeper financial services integration, and continued FMCG supplier partnerships are the most likely levers. Headwinds include currency risk, the high cost of last-mile logistics in East African urban environments, and a more cautious global investor appetite for growth-stage emerging market bets. For ecosystem watchers, Twiga remains one of the more instructive case studies in what it takes — and what it costs — to rebuild agricultural supply chains at scale in Africa.
