Morocco among top 5 African markets for agri-food investments, find report

Morocco is among the top five markets for investment in the field of agri-food, according to a recent report by food industry specialist Agv Wonder, the British International Investment Fund and the Dutch Development Bank.
According to the report titled: “Investment in Food Agriculture in Africa in 2022,” Morocco ranked fifth in terms of investment volume and deals concluded in 2021, with a turnover estimated at $15.4 million, an estimated increase of 3.2 compared to 2020.
Egypt topped the list with a $186.1 million transaction, followed by Nigeria and Kenya who both achieved an estimate of $147.8 million, followed by South Africa with $22.1 million.
While Morocco concluded seven deals during 2021, Nigeria concluded 38, Egypt 36, Kenya 32 deals, and South Africa 14 deals.
According to the same source, African start-ups in the field of agri-food managed in 2021 to achieve an estimated turnover of $482 million, while achieved only 185 million the previous year. African agri-tech companies have collectively raised $1.1 billion since 2017.
The report also recorded a consistently high number of deals in Africa over the past five years, from just 51 deals in 2017 to 99 in 2020, to 150 last year.
Despite the clear improvement and growth that the report monitors, it confirms that African agricultural technology capital accounts represent less than 1% of the global agricultural technology, despite the fact that Africa is home to one sixth of the world’s population.
This comes at a time when Morocco declined by three degrees in the food security index this year, ranking 57th globally out of 113 countries included in the index, and 12th among the countries of the Middle East and North Africa.
It also comes in the midst of the ongoing war crisis in Ukraine since last February, which has escalated the conflict over grain resources across the world, and exacerbated food insecurity in the world, raising many countries’ dependency on both domestic production and imports.