Lema Agrivest

Lema Agrivest has been in Kigali since Wednesday for the Africa Youth Agrifood Academy. The Africa Food Systems Forum opens on Monday, and on Tuesday 01st September 2026 morning our CEO will be on the Investment Room main stage, on financing MSMEs and startups in agri-food.

After a week of policy conversations, he goes in there to test one thing practical: what do financing instruments look like when they're designed for businesses that are already trading but too small to satisfy a bank?

If that's your work, his diary is open around the session. Scan the code or message him.

AGRA-Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems. The Africa Food Systems Forum - AGRF

Day 1 of the Africa Youth Agrifood Academy in Kigali - three days convened by the African Union, AGRA and AUDA-NEPAD before the Africa Food Systems Forum opens.

One question from this morning has stayed with me all day:
“In your country, where are young people treated as beneficiaries, and where are they genuinely shaping decisions, investments and implementation?”

In Lesotho, the honest answer is that we are counted more often than we are consulted. Youth appear in the targets of most agriculture programmes. We appear far less often in the rooms where those programmes are designed, priced and reviewed.

We spent the afternoon mapping one youth agrifood issue into our national policy and implementation cycle. Mine was finance - not whether it exists, but the terms attached to it. A grant facility can be genuinely well designed and still exclude the businesses it was written for, if it asks a young company to produce a third of the money in cash before anything is disbursed.

That is a design question, not a complaint. And the CAADP Kampala Implementation Guidelines we worked through today put design squarely inside the cycle where youth can engage - governance, diagnostics, investment design, and mutual accountability.

Two more days here, then the Investment Room at on Monday, where I'll make the same argument to a different room.

Lema Agrivest 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐮𝐦!

From 31 August–4 September, we’ll be in Kigali, Rwanda, joining leaders, innovators and partners in Investment Room, Main Stage under the theme:

“Strengthening Financial Ecosystems for MSMEs & Startups.”

Year-round food production systems, such as plastic tunnels, hydroponics, and climate-smart localized farming, are critical amid El Niño. They act as a vital buffer against climate shocks, protecting harvests from El Niño-induced droughts, erratic rainfall, and heat waves that routinely devastate traditional, rain-fed agriculture.

On 3rd of May we shared our recent research on cherry tomatoes, this is the current progress, the tomato has started turning. But very slow because of the cold.

Lesang bana ba tlo ithuta climate smart agriculture, specifically hydroponics🫶🏼

Cherry tomatoes trial in our NFT hydroponics system qalong ea serame tjena. Be on the lookout and stay tuned for results. 🤝