For investors
We are raising capital to build integrated processing and lending infrastructure across Kenya's smallholder coffee belt. Our pilot is in Makueni County. Construction begins in 2027.
Coffee grows here. The infrastructure hasn't caught up. We're changing that.
Limo Africa Group builds community wet mills and farmer finance infrastructure for Kenya's smallholder coffee growers — helping them produce high-quality, traceable coffee through regenerative support and harvest-repayable finance.
For coffee buyers
We are building traceability from cherry to export. Every lot will carry verified farm-level origin data. We welcome conversations with specialty roasters and green coffee traders who care about provenance.
For everyone else
Smallholder farmers in Kenya grow some of the world's finest coffee. Most of them have never seen what it is worth. We are here to fix that.
Our Services
Simple in principle. Rigorous in practice.
Most interventions in smallholder coffee work on one piece of the problem. We hold processing, finance, and traceability together in a single integrated system — because none of them work as well in isolation.
Community processing
We operate community wet mills close to where farmers grow. Farmers bring their cherry, we process it to a consistent standard, and they always know exactly what their coffee earned and exactly what they kept — no opaque deductions, no middleman math.
Flexible financing
We offer harvest-aligned financing that lets farmers invest in their farms without the risk of default during the growing season. Seasonal input loans are repaid from cherry proceeds through the same infrastructure that processes the coffee.
Traceable lots
Source traceable, single-origin green coffee to elevate your roast while directly restoring ecosystems and farmer livelihoods. Every lot carries verified farm-level origin data, captured at the mill gate and carried forward through the chain.
We are piloting in Makueni County and building toward a five-county footprint by Year 5, targeting communities where existing cooperative structures have failed farmers and where demand for verified origin data is growing fastest.
Our Pilot
Kikoko's coffee comeback
Limo is piloting its regenerative coffee model with smallholder farmers in Kikoko, Makueni County, where systemic challenges over time forced many farmers to abandon coffee farming — eroding rural livelihoods and leaving productive land underutilized despite the area's suitability for coffee. The pilot is co-designed with farmers and technical specialists so the approach is grounded in lived realities and scalable for replication across similar coffee-growing regions.
Why Kikoko?
For years, Kikoko and the surrounding highlands in Makueni supported coffee as a meaningful rural livelihood, helped by conditions that can produce excellent Arabica. Kikoko sits at roughly 1,800 meters above sea level, within the typical Arabica altitude range in Kenya.
Despite these favorable conditions, systemic failures over time made coffee increasingly unviable for many farmers, driving decline in what was once a thriving crop. The smallholder farmers of Kikoko are experienced growers — they know their land and their crop. What they have lacked is processing infrastructure close enough to be practical, credit on terms that make sense, and a way to connect what they grow to the people who would pay the most for it.
We start here because we know this place. We know the land, we know the people, and we know what has and has not worked in the decades before us. Wet mill construction begins in early 2027, and we are currently raising the capital to break ground.
Pilot at a glance
This MVP pilot is designed to test the core assumptions needed to scale our model. A full pilot brief is available upon request.
Request our pilot briefFarmer Adoption
Will farmers adopt regenerative practices with the right support?
Farm Outcomes
Do regenerative practices improve farming outcomes?
Financing
Does harvest-aligned, in-kind repayment work in practice?
Transparency
Do farmers clearly understand the pricing of their coffee?
Market Validation
Is there buyer interest in regeneratively produced coffee?
Scalability
Can the model be replicated across similar coffee-growing regions?
Funding the blueprint
We are building a proven, replicable blueprint to overcome the systemic barriers facing smallholder coffee communities. This pilot is the critical first step: a designed opportunity to generate the evidence, refine the methodology, and de-risk the path to scale.
We invite visionary grantmakers and impact investors to become foundational partners in this work. Your capital is not a donation; it is catalytic fuel to build a transferable model for impact.
What your investment delivers
We measure success by the actionable intelligence and scalable assets we generate for the field. As a partner, you receive a clear return on impact:
Validated proof of concept
First access to finalized data on the pilot's impact on key metrics.
A replicable implementation blueprint
A detailed playbook covering community engagement protocols, training modules, cost structures, and impact measurement frameworks — enabling replication across similar contexts.
Transparent accountability & insight
Funding is tied to clear milestones. You receive concise, quarterly updates focused on outcomes and learning.
Field-level intelligence
Exclusive insight into the intersection of poverty alleviation, ecosystem restoration, and supply-chain integrity, positioning your organization as a thought leader in transformative agriculture.
About Us
This started with a farm in Makueni.
Coffee has been grown in Kikoko Village, Makueni County since the 1980s. For most of that time, the farmers who grew it had no reliable way to process it, no access to seasonal credit, and no mechanism to connect what they produced to buyers who would pay what it was worth. That is not a story unique to Kikoko — it is the story of smallholder coffee farming across Kenya. The failure is not one of effort or quality. It is structural.
Limo Africa Group exists to address that structure directly. We build community wet mills paired with seasonal finance for farmers and the digital infrastructure to connect what they grow to the buyers who will pay the most for it. Farmers stay in control of their coffee. We earn our place in the chain by being useful, not by being unavoidable.
We are building a new model for Kenyan coffee that regenerates land, rewards farmers, and restores trust in the value chain. The pilot is in Kikoko; construction begins in early 2027. We are pre-revenue, building deliberately, and raising the capital to do this properly.
Michael Sewe
Founder & CEO — Limo Africa Group, incorporated in Kenya in late 2024.
Contact
We are in active conversations with investors, buyers, and development finance partners.
If you are interested in what we are building, we want to hear from you. We are at the pre-revenue stage, raising the capital to begin construction of our first wet mill in Kikoko, Makueni County. We share an executive summary and financial model with serious enquiries.
Investors and DFI partners
We are raising seed capital to fund pilot infrastructure. If you work in impact-first agricultural finance or development lending in East Africa, please reach out.
Coffee buyers and traders
We are not yet processing; we expect our first harvest season to follow construction in 2027. If you are a specialty buyer or green coffee trader looking to build direct relationships with verified-origin Kenyan lots, we would like to start now.
Press, researchers, and others
We are happy to speak with journalists, academics, and development practitioners working on smallholder coffee, agricultural finance, or Kenya's coffee regulatory landscape.