AATIF–African Milling Limited (AML) Cooperative Strengthening Project

  • Location: Nyimba, Eastern Province
  • Project Date: March, 2025
  • Supported By : African Milling

The Africa Agriculture and Trade Investment Fund (AATIF) performs sustainableinvestments across the entire agricultural value chain to promote inclusive growth, increase decent employment and increase income to farmers and entrepreneurs in theagricultural sector in Africa. The AATIF supports business growth of agriculturalenterprises, connects farmers to inputs and markets and contributes to local valuecreation, ultimately reducing poverty. Parallel to AATIF, the AATIF Technical Assistance(TA) Facility provides investment-specific support to Partner Institutions and FinalBeneficiaries, among other tasks.

One of AATIF’s Final Beneficiaries is African Milling Limited (AML), founded in 2006.AML is a Zambian, family-owned maize and wheat processing company. The company, through its sister company and aggregator Nyimba Investments Limited, buys its maize solely from smallholder farmers, currently totaling 22,000. AML’s mill capacity increased from 168 metric tonnes (MT) a day in 2009 to 504 MT/day in 2019 in the anticipation of increased long-term demand. The company aims to run the mill 24/7 and for this, a sustainable sourcing model is needed. The financing part of the AML’s sourcing model is in place, thanks to the AATIF-backed collateral management facility agreement for the purchase of maize (and wheat), which amounted to USD 15 million annually as of March 2024.

 

Besides finance to secure sufficient volumes, a strong supply chain of committedsuppliers is required to ensure the supply of raw materials meets the mill’s capacity. In the context of highly competitive maize sourcing (there are at least 15 competing milling companies as well as the government), a reduced harvest of maize due to the 2023-2024 season’s drought and a large prevalence of side-selling by farmers, this is not an easy feat in the experience of AML.

Therefore, AML requested the AATIF Technical Assistance (TA) Facility to come in andhelp strengthen existing cooperatives that are part of AML’s supply chain. This supportis expected to improve their services provision to member farmers and strengthenfarmer commitment to supply their crop to AML through the cooperatives. In addition,AML/Nyimba wish their staff to be capacitated to assess and strengthen cooperatives,to ensure they play a more effective role in building relations with their sourcing network rather than dealing with them on a mere transactional basis, as most competitors do.

Project Gallery