Smallholder farmers grow much of the world’s food, but too often go hungry themselves. Over 60% of rural people in Africa experience food insecurity, with the crisis particularly acute in farming communities.1 These farmers are constrained by limited land size, unpredictable weather, and seasonality of food crops. Adding chickens to smallholder farms can be a solution: Taking up minimal space and subsisting on materials that might otherwise be waste products, chickens can be an affordable source of protein to bridge nutrition gaps in rural communities. The dominant breeds in the market, broilers, are fast-growing and nutrient-dense, but also resource-intensive and vulnerable to diseases. By comparison, local chicken breeds are hardy, but produce insufficient amounts of eggs and meat.
Hatch Africa connects smallholder farmers across Africa with affordable chickens through a unique agent model. The breed used by Hatch is 3x more productive than local chickens, disease-resistant, and well-suited for the rural African smallholder. Hatch Africa sells day-old chicks to trained “agent farmers” who raise them for five weeks; the ready chicks are then sold to smallholder farmers in the local community. This model reduces early mortality of the chickens, derisking the value chain and ensuring that farmers are buying sturdier birds. By facilitating connections between the agent farmers and smallholders, Hatch Africa empowers each operator in the chain to be an entrepreneur, rippling the positive impact throughout the community. This unique model has a large social impact upside for smallholder communities, but it also poses challenges for expansion—most notably due to the significant infrastructure investments required. Making those investments is only possible with patient capital, which is scarce in agri-SME finance.
AgDevCo first partnered with Uzima, a subsidiary of Hatch Africa, in 2017 and has since expanded its support, including with a $4M equity investment to help the business expand to Rwanda. Building on this success, in 2024 CSAF members IDH Investment Management and AgDevCo jointly provided Hatch Africa with a $9.5M investment to support the business’s expansion in adjacent countries by financing core operating expenses, working capital, and startup CapEx. This seven-year loan is structured with specific plans for interest and principal repayment tailored to Hatch Africa’s needs during this era of expansion. In total, CSAF members have supported Hatch Africa with $25M in loans and $7.4M in equity. This financing is helping Hatch Africa build out its model in Kenya, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire, using improved chicken breeds to boost opportunities for local entrepreneurs and combat food insecurity.
1. FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2025. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd6008en