Building an African meat empire from Rwanda

Interview with Herve Tuyishime
FOUNDER and CEO, PANIEL MEAT PROCESSING

Lives in: Rwanda

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At the end of 2024, Rwandan company Paniel Meat Processing (PMP) went public on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius, listing on its high-growth board. Yet, less than a decade earlier, founder Herve Tuyishime had lost his family home after the business failed to repay a bank loan.

Today, PMP is Rwanda’s second-largest chicken processor and third-largest beef distributor, with exports across the continent. How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz spoke to Tuyishime about his business journey.

Topics discussed during the interview include:

• Starting from scratch: How he started a meat processing company with no industry background
• Finding customers: Convincing retailers and bars in Rwanda to stock his products
• Losing his home: The consequences of the business failing to repay a bank loan
• Expanding beyond Rwanda: Breaking into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s much larger market
• Lessons learned: What he would do differently if given the chance to start over

Watch the full interview below: (only available on howwemadeitinafrica.com)

Interview summary

Herve Tuyishime’s first job was as an accountant for an insurance company, but accounting was not where his passion lay. Looking for direction, he enrolled in a six-month entrepreneurship course, where participants were required to develop a business idea.

At first Tuyishime wanted to start a venture in the filmmaking industry. However, he realised filmmaking wasn’t feasible in Rwanda. He then decided to pursue another one of his passions: farming. At that time, around the early 2010s, there were relatively few commercial farmers in Rwanda.

After completing the course, he joined another entrepreneurship programme run by the government. One of the criteria was that the business had to involve value addition. Tuyishime developed a pig farming and meat processing concept, which secured him a bank loan of 20 million Rwandan francs (about $22,000 at the time). He used the funds to launch Paniel Meat Processing (PMP) in 2012.

Breaking into Rwanda’s meat industry

Tuyishime started on a small parcel of land in Kigali, where he kept pigs and converted the property’s house into a modest meat processing facility. While waiting for his own pigs to mature, he sourced animals from other farmers.

One challenge, however, was his unfamiliarity with the product – he had never eaten a sausage before. “The first sausage I ate, it was from our own production,” he recalls. To make up for his lack of experience, he hired someone with a background in sausage-making to guide him through the basics.

Selling the product was another hurdle. Processed meat was not yet widely consumed in Rwanda, and grocery stores in Kigali were initially hesitant to stock it. However, as awareness grew, demand slowly followed. Initially focused on pork, PMP expanded into beef sausages within months – products that eventually outsold the pork range.

To diversify his customer base, Tuyishime started supplying bars in Kigali, which at the time did not typically serve meat or sausages. As these establishments introduced the products, PMP gathered customer feedback and used it to refine and expand its offerings.

A costly learning curve

For the first five years, the business faced a lot of difficulties. Lacking experience, Tuyishime and his team made several mistakes that hindered growth and made it difficult to repay the bank loan.

Ultimately, the bank seized the collateral Tuyishime had put up – his family home. “It was almost the only asset we had in the country,” he says. His mother and siblings were upset, but they continued to support him. From 2016, the family had to rent a home, only managing to buy another in 2022.

Despite these setbacks, Tuyishime remained determined. Once the bank loan was off the books – though at the cost of his family home – the business began to stabilise and slowly grow.

Securing American investment

In 2016, Tuyishime connected with Luni Libes, an American entrepreneur and founder of Fledge, a Seattle-based venture capital fund and business accelerator. He completed Fledge’s accelerator programme and received an initial $20,000 investment from the fund.

Over time, Fledge received an increasing number of applications from African businesses, leading to a substantial portfolio of food and agriculture companies. In 2020, a selection of these companies were spun out into Africa Eats, with Fledge investors receiving shares in the new entity.

Libes saw potential in Tuyishime from the outset. “There’s a spark that you can see,” he said in an earlier interview. Over the years, Fledge and Africa Eats have provided Tuyishime with $710,000 in equity and debt funding.

(Read our earlier interview with Luni Libes: Investing in African agribusiness, Warren Buffett style)

Crossing borders

Recognising the limitations of the domestic market, Tuyishime shifted PMP’s focus beyond Rwanda. He relocated operations to Rubavu, near the border with Goma, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) bustling trade hub. Demand for meat in the DRC was significantly higher, with a stronger culture of consuming products like sausages, ham, and burgers. The country’s larger population – 111 million compared to Rwanda’s 14 million – also offered a much bigger market.

(Read more: DRC’s food market – Export potential for Zambia and other neighbours)

PMP has since expanded distribution to several other African countries, including the Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Benin.

Strengthening the supply chain with Livestock Bank

To secure a reliable livestock supply, Tuyishime launched Livestock Bank, an entity that works with small-scale farmers to improve production. It provides farmers with high-quality breeding stock, along with essential inputs such as animal feed, veterinary care, and training in farming techniques. When the animals reproduce and the offspring are sold, Livestock Bank deducts the associated costs and shares the remaining profits with the farmer.

This system provides PMP with a stable supply of livestock while giving smallholder farmers a guaranteed market, reducing uncertainty and the burden of finding buyers. Today, Livestock Bank collaborates with 6,000 farmers to raise pigs and chickens.

Refocusing on Rwanda’s domestic market

Paniel’s strong export business led the company to prioritise international sales over the domestic Rwandan market. However, the Covid-19 pandemic caused exports to drop by around 50%, prompting PMP to refocus on local sales to complement exports.

In 2022, it launched a chain of premium butchery stores in Rwanda, providing a better alternative to traditional options. The company now has around a dozen outlets in the country.

PMP currently supplies fresh beef, pork, chicken, goat, and lamb, both through its own stores and to hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, and other butcheries. Its processed products include fresh and smoked sausages, ham, bacon, salami, and meatballs, to name a few.

Building a logistics business

In 2020, PMP spun off its logistics department into a standalone company, Truk Rwanda. Beyond leasing space in its trucks, Truk also has cold storage facilities in Rwanda’s five largest cities. It has helped address the shortage of logistics services in Rwanda and across Eastern and Southern Africa, providing trucking, cold chain, and logistics solutions for food and agricultural companies.

Truk supports a range of transportation needs, including cross-border import and export services, town deliveries from factories to shops, and farm-to-market distribution.

A lack of capital investment initially limited the company’s revenue to $500,000 in 2021. However, an investment from Africa Eats in 2022 enabled Truk to double its fleet to eight trucks, driving a 335% revenue increase that year. A further capital injection in 2023 nearly tripled its size, pushing revenue to $6.4 million – making it larger than the meat processing business. The company now operates around two dozen trucks.

A stock market debut and new products

In 2023, PMP expanded into poultry farming and processing, setting up a facility with a capacity of 60 tonnes per month. That year, PMP’s total sales reached $1.6 million, up from $35,000 in 2016, making it Rwanda’s third-largest meat processor.

In 2024, the company listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius under the High-Growth Segment, a platform for fast-growing SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa.

PMP is also preparing to launch Khaboga, a pre-cooked, packaged meat and vegetable meal with a shelf life of over a year and no need for refrigeration. Aimed at lower-income consumers who cannot afford to eat meat regularly, the product will sell for a fraction of a dollar. PMP expects Khaboga to contribute nearly 10% of its revenue in its first year.

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