Kenyan agri-tech venture studio Pyramidia Ventures has secured $1.5 million in funding to expand its model of creating and scaling climate-focused startups across Africa.
The investment comes from Dutch impact investor Triple Jump, which is deploying funds through the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF).
The raise will support Pyramidia’s mission of strengthening Africa’s food systems by incubating ventures that are both climate-smart and commercially sustainable.
“We are building companies that not only solve immediate food and climate challenges but can also attract long-term private investment,” said Pyramidia co-founder Ruth Bertens, a former McKinsey consultant.
What Pyramidia Is
Unlike traditional investors that back existing companies, Pyramidia Ventures operates as a venture studio, a model that designs, launches, and grows startups internally before spinning them out into independent companies.
Founded in 2021, Pyramidia is co-led by Bertens and Joseph Rehmann, the founder of Victory Farms, one of Africa’s largest aquaculture businesses. Their combined expertise blends global corporate strategy with deep knowledge of African agriculture.
Pyramidia’s long-term ambition is to establish a steady pipeline of investment-ready ventures that can reshape African food systems, which currently face mounting pressure from climate change, soil degradation, and post-harvest losses.
Funding Wins So Far
The $1.5 million package includes $1.3 million in direct investment to finance new ventures and $200,000 in technical assistance earmarked for business development, capacity building, and farmer support programs.
Both are channeled through Triple Jump, an Amsterdam-based impact investor managing the Dutch government-backed DGGF. Since its creation, the DGGF has mobilized capital to strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in over 70 emerging markets, with agriculture ranking as a critical focus area.
Africa’s agriculture sector employs around 65% of the workforce, contributes up to 35% of GDP, and sustains hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers. However, underinvestment means the sector consistently underperforms.
Pyramidia’s fundraising success presents a growing recognition that innovative models can de-risk agribusinesses and attract international capital.
Services and Ventures Under Pyramidia
Since its inception, Pyramidia has launched and supported several high-impact ventures:
Stable Foods: offers “irrigation-as-a-service” on a subscription model, helping smallholder farmers reduce dependence on erratic rainfall. Access to irrigation is crucial, as only 6% of Africa’s farmland is irrigated, compared to 37% in Asia.
Womega: streamlines the fish supply chain by reducing inefficiencies, increasing traceability, and lowering post-harvest losses. According to the FAO, Africa loses up to 35% of its fish harvest before it reaches consumers, undermining food security and livelihoods.
Afriprotein: focuses on alternative proteins, including insect- and plant-based sources for both human consumption and animal feed. The global alternative protein industry is projected to reach $17.4 billion by 2027, with Africa seen as a potential growth frontier due to rising demand for affordable and sustainable protein.
Together, these ventures demonstrate Pyramidia’s integrated approach, using innovation, data, and sustainable practices to tackle systemic bottlenecks in food production and supply chains.
Plans for the Newly Secured Funding
The fresh capital will be deployed to incubate new startups, expand existing ones, and enhance Pyramidia’s technical support for farmers. This includes strengthening business models, improving scalability, and making ventures more attractive to local and international investors.
The studio also plans to widen its geographic footprint beyond Kenya, tapping into markets where food security is under severe climate stress.
“Capital alone is not enough, we want to pair it with the right technical expertise so that these businesses can thrive,” Bertens emphasized.
The technical assistance component will be especially critical in enabling farmers to adopt climate-smart practices, bridging the knowledge and resource gap that has often slowed agricultural transformation in Africa.
Why This Matters
Africa paradoxically holds 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet it remains the region most affected by food insecurity.
The FAO estimates that over 280 million Africans are undernourished, a number that has worsened in recent years due to climate shocks, conflict, and supply chain disruptions.
Projections suggest that, without intervention, climate change could cut crop yields in some parts of Africa by 20–30% by 2050. Pyramidia’s approach, therefore, is not simply about entrepreneurship, it is about addressing systemic risks threatening food security.
By embedding climate resilience into startups from inception, the venture studio is positioning itself as a long-term player in Africa’s food security equation.
Global Impact and Outlook
International investors increasingly view climate-smart agriculture as both a moral and financial imperative.
“There is growing global appetite for climate-smart agribusiness, but investors need structured, de-risked opportunities. Pyramidia is providing that bridge,” said Annemieke Brouwer, Senior Investment Officer at Triple Jump.
Analysts note that models like Pyramidia’s could attract billions in impact capital to African food systems over the next decade, as governments and investors seek scalable solutions to climate change and food insecurity.
If successful, Pyramidia could emerge as a continental leader in sustainable agri-food innovation, offering a template for venture studios in other regions of the Global South.
Talking Point
While Pyramidia’s $1.5 million raise is a welcome step toward strengthening Africa’s fragile food systems, the amount feels modest compared to the scale of the continent’s agricultural and climate challenges.
Africa’s smallholder farmers, who make up the backbone of the sector, face structural barriers ranging from limited access to irrigation and credit to high post-harvest losses, and tackling these requires investments in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
Pyramidia’s venture studio model is innovative in that it creates startups tailored to Africa’s realities, but the sustainability of such ventures will depend heavily on whether they can scale beyond pilot projects and attract long-term commercial capital, not just donor-driven funds.
The real test will be whether these startups can survive outside the safety net of a venture studio and deliver measurable improvements for millions of farmers rather than a few thousand.
In that sense, this funding is an encouraging show, but it must be matched by deeper structural investment if Africa’s food insecurity crisis is to be meaningfully addressed.
