Aruwa Capital, the Lagos-based impact investment company, has joined the shareholding of snack producers, Fastizers. This is less than two weeks after the equity company acquired a stake in a Nigerian retail company. Aruwa now wants to help Fastizers expand in the country.

Aruwa Capital Management announced on June 29 that it has invested $2 million in Fastizers Food, a Nigerian snack and confectionery manufacturer. Aruwa’s motive was to help Fastizers grow its presence in the local snack industry; a market valued at $883 million in 2021 and which is expected to swell to $1.5 billion by 2024.

Fastizers, which operates in Nigeria since 2010, said it will use Aruwa’s financing to expand its factory and introduce new products to the local market, taking advantage of the consumption increase spurred by urbanization and population growth. Also, the investment will support Fastizers’ ambition to become a significant player in Nigeria’s biscuit and snack sector.

"This investment allows Fastizers to scale up by increasing our production capacity to meet the growing demand for our products. We will also expand our distribution network, allowing us to deliver our products within and outside Nigeria," Debby Lawson, Founder, and COO of Fastizers, explained.

Aruwa Capital is Fastizers’ first institutional investor, and the snack producer is the second Nigerian business that the impact investor backed this month of June.

Indeed, on June 16, Aruwa announced an investment in the e-commerce platform OmniRetail.

According to the latest data available, Aruwa has invested in eight companies so far, in Nigeria and Ghana. These companies generated total revenue of $25 million in 2022.

Chamberline Moko