With a fast growing population, where average families spend 50% on food, Africa needs to produce more food, cheaply. 
What have we learned about building commercial scale and globally competitive food and ag value chains?

How does Olam, born in Africa, think about and mitigate risk in ag in ways others can learn from?

How did Pierre successfully create global demand for African palettes?

Experts featured include Yosuke, head of IFC's ag investments; Eren Kelekci, AFDB ag Investments for AFDB; Julie Greene, Chief Sustainability Officer at OLAM; Pierre Thiam, world famous chef.

View full ag report from 60+ interviews here - https://bit.ly/commercialag

We'll dive into the lessons for adapting the private equity model for Africa, alternative models like permanent capital vehicles, who has been successful in doing so, and which LPs remain excited about Africa. 

Experts featured in this episode include Abi Mustafa-Maduakor, CEO of the Africa Private Capital Association; Ann Wyman and George Odoo, Senior Partners at AfricInvest; Creagh Sudding and Opeyemi Oduwole, leaders in KPMG's family business and family office practices

Which LPs are still excited about investing in Africa?

What can we learn from 30 yrs of iterating PE in Africa?

How are GPs adapting the traditional PE structure?

Who has been successful in raising alternative vehicles and why?

View the working research on permanent capital vehicles here - https://bit.ly/permanentcapital

Alina's journey spans a childhood in Latvia to a career designing diverse funding vehicles including venture studios and VC funds to support early stage entrepreneurs in Africa to South East Asia.

In this episode, we delve into her insights from building credibility with LPs for diverse missions and markets, how she's adapted fund design for new markets, and her vision for Utopia, which designs and launches funds for emerging markets.

You can deep dive into the venture studio model FFA pioneered in Africa here - https://bit.ly/venturestudiofuture

Welcome to The Search! Excited to share this experimental season with you. On this welcome episode, I share some quick personal background, and what you can expect from this season in format and topics.