The Missing Middle: Why African Agricultural Projects Fail Before Financing.

There's a common belief that African farming projects can't attract finance. It isn't true, and acting as though it were is costing us projects that deserved to succeed. Money for finished, well-organised projects still exists in large amounts. Some of it is now under obligation to be invested in countries like Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. What has collapsed is a different kind of money: the grants and aid that used to pay for preparing a project, meaning the lawyers, the contracts, the land titles and the records that turn a good idea into something a bank can actually lend against. So the shortage has moved. It's no longer a shortage of money to fund projects. It's a shortage of money to prepare them, and almost nobody has adjusted. This paper looks closely at three East African agricultural projects of similar quality. One was never financed. Two were, one of them at a scale most people assume is out of reach. The difference had nothing to do with how good the projects were. It came down to five documents: a company that could legally borrow, a signed contract to buy the output, land a bank could take as security, someone to pay for the preparation, and proper farmer records. The full paper explains what each of these is, what it costs, how long it takes, and who is best placed to pay. It's written for decision-makers who are not finance specialists, and every technical term is explained as it appears.