Tanzania-based East Africa Foods ranks among the strongest performers in the portfolio of Africa Eats, an investment holding company focused on backing businesses within Africa’s food and agriculture value chain.

East Africa Foods was founded over a decade ago by Elia Timotheo. With $4,000 in savings, he started a business that sourced fruits and vegetables from farmers and sold them to hotels and restaurants. In its first year, the company generated $100,000 in revenue. By 2023, its top line had grown to $14 million, though it has captured only about 1% of Tanzania’s fresh produce market. The company operates four processing and distribution centres: two in Dar es Salaam, one in Dodoma, and the newest in Zanzibar, opened in early 2024.

“They are by far the largest fruit and vegetable aggregator in the country of Tanzania by orders of magnitude,” said Luni Libes, CEO of Africa Eats in a recent interview with How we made it in Africa. Notably, the company sells all its produce within Tanzania, with no exports.

Its main revenue drivers are potatoes, onions, bananas, rice, and beans. Bananas, in particular, represent a key success story. Informal traders historically sold green bananas, but East Africa Foods introduced a ripening process that transformed the value chain. “Now they’re able to sell ripe yellow bananas because our company buys them from the smallholder farmers, brings them to the cities in big trucks, and then sends them through a five-day process to ripen. And because of that, they basically took over the banana market,” Libes explained. How we made it in Africa