Africa’s population will grow by one billion people by 2050, with its population set to nearly double from 1.3 billion now to 2.5 billion.

This population explosion adds further complexity to the many challenges facing the continent, which include urban sprawl and slumming, significant unemployment, and food insecurity linked with land pressure and deforestation. This population boom puts further pressure on African agriculture, which is largely unbankable and informal and prevents the majority of people from advancing.

Those most affected by this population explosion and lack of spacial planning are those living at the bottom of the pyramid, who will struggle to find jobs, affordable food, safe housing, access to infrastructure, as well as healthcare and education.

Efforts to address city development have faced significant challenges, as building new cities requires catalytic investments that concurrently address job creation, food security, infrastructure, and housing.

Africa’s Tech-Enabled City Starter

A Job-Generating, Home-Owner Creating, City-Starting, Tech-Spreading Model that can Scale.

Small Farm Cities Africa is a social impact startup with a working prototype in Malawi building affordable, job-creating agricultural communities. By organizing formally titled land and integrating technology with management practices and economies of scale, SFC generates jobs, unlocks home ownership for a significant number of overlooked people, reduces land pressure, and enables the mass adoption of technology and infrastructure. When these activities are done together, this creates a scalable path for upward mobility.

By integrating commercial drip-irrigated greenhouse and open field horticulture, poultry, and aquaculture together with hyper affordable housing within a planned community knit together with technology, fun recreational amenities, and micro-municipal infrastructure, people are making a sustainable income and on a path to home ownership.

Small Farm Cities is a city-starter. We are a bankable model that scales, working with people at the bottom of the pyramid to move forward through organized titled land, affordable housing, and planned production agriculture and aquaculture.

Our business is designed for people at the bottom of the pyramid and shaped around their incomes and investment capabilities. Through the jobs created from various farming businesses that serve the local markets, individuals earn a sustainable income, work their way into living and owning a home in a growing community, and invest back into the businesses they support.

What Does a Systems Approach to Upward Mobility Look Like?

  • Meaningful Work

    Small Farm Cities is a job-creating community that integrates various businesses in its community. Employees can money through agriculture, aquaculture, hospitality, and construction, and are able to take ownership and find meaning in their work by taking on real responsibility.

  • Home Ownership

    Employees are on track to owning their own Small Farm City constructed home. By paying their way into home ownership, employees are storing the value their earned through work in assets that can hold and grow that value over time. Regardless of unstable currencies, homes in planned communities can grow in value over time.

  • Career Advancing Training

    At SFC, we don’t believe in “capacity building” for capacity building’s sake. Employees engage in trainings that allow them to immediately grow professionally and personally. For our professionals, we offer daily English lessons as well as sessions in technology, personal development, and specific subject matter (such as our greenhouse management certificate). Our associate and manager teams receive weekly career and leadership coaching from experience professionals.

  • Investment Opportunities

    Through contextually appropriate arrangements such as fractional ownership, SFC enables employees, community members, and African’s to invest locally in a certain aspects of the business. As the business grows, employees not only earn their income, but returns on their investment in the businesses they work in.

  • Access to Infrastructure

    By organizing formal communities of people all earning meaningful incomes, SFC clusters can build, pay, and access micro-municipal infrastructure. By building its own infrastructure, SFC communities can be located nearly anywhere. SFC clusters have access to power (through solar), water (through bore holes), and waste management. As SFC scales, this can include education, healthcare, transport, and more.