Kenya’s fruits and vegetable delivery company, Twiga Foods, has received a $5 million loan from the United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to improve food security in Kenya.
The investment from DFC seeks to empower smallholder farmers and urban produce vendors (especially women) to have access to markets and also to improve the agricultural supply chain with cold storage, by enabling Twiga Foods to buy additional transportation and cold storage equipment.
DFC’s investment in Twiga supports its 2X Women’s Initiative by empowering a network of mostly female produce vendors to increase sales and profits. The initiative has already catalyzed more than $1 billion to economically empower women across the developing world.
“Twiga is advancing an innovative solution to create economic opportunity particularly for women, while ensuring dependable and affordable sources of food across Kenya,” said DFC Managing Director of Global Women’s Issues Charity Wallace. “DFC is proud to support this project, which will help strengthen food security and unlock untapped economic potential across Kenya.”
Twiga operates collection centers across Kenya, and also a central packhouse with cold storage facilities. It owns a fleet of mobilized trucks and vans for collection and distribution of produce, thus creating an efficient logistics system that limits its post-harvest losses to 5%, compared to 30% at informal markets.
Twiga Food’s main objective is to link farmers and vendors to fair, trusted, modern markets. It also aims to provide a complete supply chain in Kenya for quality produce in urban areas.
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