Kenyan aquaculture startup Victory Farms has raised a fresh $15 million (Sh1.9 billion) in funding from UK-based investment vehicle AgDevCo to scale its tilapia farming business in Kenya and Rwanda.
The debt will go towards building new fish farming sites in the two markets, as the company targets producing 30,000 tonnes of fish in 2026 to meet growing demand for Nile tilapia.
Victory Farms operates hatcheries, nursery ponds and deep-water cages on Lake Victoria in Kenya and Lake Kivu in Rwanda, where it produces and sells fish to market traders through a network of sales outlets.
“AgDevCo’s investment will help us expand production and strengthen distribution as demand for affordable, high-quality fish continues to grow across East Africa,” the company’s founder and CEO, Joseph Rehmann, said.
Victory Farms was founded in 2015 by Mr Rehmann, an American, and Steve Moran, a British national. The company is expanding its tilapia cage-farming project in Lake Victoria to tap into Kenya’s white meat market.
Cage farming involves setting up a netted enclosure suspended in the lake, with fish fingerlings enclosed inside. The fish are fed and tended to within the enclosure. The harvesting cycle for caged fish is about one year per cage.
Latest disclosures show that Victory Farms is planning a fresh Sh750 million expansion of its Lake Victoria tilapia cage-farming project in Migori County to capitalise on the fast-growing white meat segment.
The project, to be implemented in new concession areas around Nyatike West and Nyatike South sub-counties, will see the company expand its existing sustainable tilapia cage production by approximately 30,000 tonnes per year.
Victory Farms’ cage-farming concession block in Suba South sub-county covers Litare, Jiudendi, Ngeri, Nyagwethe, Kamogo, Uterere and Kisegi beaches.
The new concession in Nyatike follows another Sh750 million project by Victory Farms around Sindo in Homa Bay County, where the company also targets annual production of 30,000 tonnes of cage-farmed tilapia.
Capital backing
“Since our initial investment of $4 million (Sh517 million at current exchange rates) in 2021, the company has significantly increased production while improving operational efficiency. We are delighted to put our capital to work to drive more impact in the region,” said John Jakobsson, Investment Director at AgDevCo.
AgDevCo invests solely in the African agriculture sector through a mix of long-term loans, equity and grant funding. The investment vehicle has pooled capital from British International Investment (BII), the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Norway’s Norfund, among others.
In Kenya, AgDevCo has also backed Agventure and Sagana Nuts.
Before the latest debt capital, Victory Farms had raised $43.2 million (Sh5.6 billion) in funding, according to its profile on Crunchbase, a global company database. It closed its $35 million (Sh4.5 billion) Series B funding round in April 2023.
In recent years, increased fish production from marine fisheries and cage culture in Kenya has reduced the country’s dependence on foreign suppliers and stabilised the domestic market.
According to data from the Kenya Fisheries Service (KeFS), aquaculture recorded a five percent increase in production to 33,423 tonnes of fish harvested in 2024, up from 31,767 tonnes in 2023.
“The fish production from cage culture continues to increase steadily, accounting for about 76.4 percent (25,547 tonnes), while land-based freshwater aquaculture and mariculture along the coast produce 7,742 tonnes and 134 tonnes, respectively,” KeFS said last July.
Still, Kenya produces less than the national demand of 510,000 tonnes of fish. Total fish production increased by 4.4 percent in 2024 to 168,424 tonnes, from 161,307 tonnes in 2023.
Most of the production came from inland capture fisheries, which accounted for 86,527 tonnes.
