Southern Africa is endowed with a wealth of agricultural possibility with related agribusiness opportunities focussing on downstream value add, whether food production related, virgin biomass, agricultural residues or recycled fibre. Several aquaculture SMME opportunities exist in the current burgeoning global market for fish and seafood protein. Some of these businesses use best-of-breed clean technologies to grow food more sustainably using third generation farming methods.
In addition, under the conditions of limited opportunities of expansion in virgin fibre base, the use of recycled fibre provides increasingly viable opportunities for expansion.
There are also numerous forestation and re-forestation programmes with carbon credit potential in southern Africa. In addition, with the increasing number of forests achieving Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, a number of value-added products are under development often with significant export market opportunities. An example can be seen in the proliferation of soft board and chip board operations and their various products. Forestry biomass is also converted into energy by-products and other materials for similar markets.
Inspired Evolution is currently investigating numerous opportunities in this sector with several large forestry companies across southern Africa. There are also investment opportunities in the substitution of harvested firewood through the use of charcoal and other pellet fuels manufactured from forest and timber waste.