💰 The Missing Middle in EAC Agribusiness Why Promising Agricultural SMEs Struggle to Move from Startup to Scale

In brief: East Africa's agricultural sector drives the bulk of regional trade and employment, yet the enterprises meant to modernize it — processors, aggregators, cold-chain operators, input distributors — are systematically underfinanced. This issue examines why, what "the missing middle" actually means in practice, and what a functioning agrifinance architecture would need to look like across the EAC and in Somalia specifically.

Agriculture occupies a strange position in East Africa's economy: it is simultaneously one of the region's largest sectors and one of the hardest to finance.

The East African Community identifies agriculture as the region's leading source of employment, and reports that agricultural commodities account for roughly 65% of intra-regional trade volume. More than 70% of the region's industries are agro-based and depend directly on agricultural inputs to function. Agriculture is not a peripheral sector propped up by donor goodwill — it is regional infrastructure.

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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/missing-middle-eac-agribusiness-why-promising-smes-move-abdulkadir-6kqlf