Ask an American where macadamia nuts come from and they’ll tell you Hawaii. They’re not entirely wrong — Hawaii’s volcanic slopes have been producing macadamias since the 1880s, and the association is so strong it’s practically cultural. Macadamia equals Hawaii. Everyone knows that.
Except it isn’t true anymore — and hasn’t been for decades. Africa now supplies 58% of global macadamia exports, a market worth $755 million in 2025 and growing at nearly 9% per year through 2031.
South Africa is the world’s largest macadamia producer. Kenya is close behind. And a rising belt of suppliers — Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda — is expanding so fast that Rwanda’s exports jumped 110% year-on-year in 2025 alone.
Meanwhile, Hawaii produces roughly 18,000–20,000 metric tons annually. The United States consumes over 71,000 metric tons. The math is obvious: America’s macadamia supply overwhelmingly depends on Africa. The continent that Americans associate with rough-hewn commodity exports is quietly running the global premium nut industry — and almost no one in the US has noticed.
That gap in perception is exactly where we find opportunity.
A SUPPLY CHAIN BUILT FOR FINANCING
Macadamia’s value chain is not simple. Unlike a commodity extracted from the ground and shipped directly to a refinery, macadamia moves through multiple hands across multiple borders before it reaches a consumer.
It typically starts with smallholder farmers in countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, or Mozambique, who harvest in-shell nuts and sell to aggregators or local processing hubs. Those hubs crack, sort, and grade the kernels — a capital-intensive step — before the product is consolidated and exported, often through South African ports, to buyers in the US, Europe, China, and Japan.
Each handoff in that chain creates a financing need. Farmers need working capital to cover the gap between harvest and payment. Processors need pre-export credit to buy the raw crop before they’ve sold the kernels. Exporters need short-term bridge facilities to cover the weeks between shipment and receipt of payment from an overseas buyer.
These are short-duration, asset-backed needs — 45 to 90 days in most cases — secured against real commodity flows. This is precisely the type of financing that African commercial banks struggle to provide consistently.
Local institutions are often unfamiliar with the commodity sector, risk-averse on cross-border transactions, or simply unable to move at the speed the trade demands. The gap doesn’t reflect weak underlying economics — it reflects a structural absence of fit-for-purpose capital.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR INVESTORS
For investors thinking about private credit in Africa, macadamia illustrates something important: the most compelling opportunities are often hiding in plain sight, embedded in global supply chains that most Western investors never examine.
The macadamia market has real demand — driven by surging consumer appetite for healthy, premium snacks in the US, Europe, and increasingly China. It has real supply — Africa’s production infrastructure is deep and expanding. What it lacks is the financing infrastructure to connect the two efficiently.
That gap represents a yield opportunity. Short-term commodity trade finance in Africa — properly structured, with collateral secured against the underlying commodity and offtake, and managed by a team with on-the-ground presence — generates returns that are difficult to replicate in developed market private credit. The collateral is real. The flows are recurring. The tenures are short. And the demand for capital is consistent.
At Nurture Investment Management, this is exactly the kind of opportunity we have been financing since 2022 through our Nurture Commodity Finance Investors Fund (NCFF). Our team operates across Southern, Eastern, and Western Africa — including the core macadamia geographies of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique — with on-the-ground relationships built over more than a decade. We understand the harvest cycles, the cross-border logistics, and the counterparties.
Our model is built on short-term, revolving facilities — typically 45 to 90 days — secured against commodity collateral that is independently verified and regularly revalued. All transactions are USD-denominated, insulating investors from local currency risk. Our track record across soft and hard commodities has delivered gross returns of 2.93–3.21% per month, with a $200M+ pipeline of identified opportunities across the continent.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Macadamia is one example. The same structural story — Africa as a dominant but under-financed supplier of commodities the world depends on — plays out across cashews, sesame, specialty coffee, tobacco, and a dozen other markets. Africa produces 60%+ of global cashews, the majority of specialty coffee, and is the world’s leading macadamia exporter. In almost none of these cases does the financing infrastructure match the scale of the opportunity.
That's not a problem. It's an asset class.
The $120 billion annual trade finance gap in Africa is well-documented. What is less discussed is where within that gap the most attractive risk-adjusted returns sit: in short-duration, commodity-backed facilities where the collateral is real, the counterparties are known, and the deal cycle is fast enough to compound returns at a rate that long-duration strategies simply cannot match.
The next time you pick up a bag of macadamia nuts at Whole Foods, check the label. There’s a reasonable chance those nuts were grown in Africa, processed in South Africa, and shipped to you across an ocean. There’s a near-certainty that the chain of capital that made that trade possible was harder to access than it should have been.
That’s the gap we’re here to fill.
ABOUT THE FUND
The Nurture Commodity Finance Investors Fund (NCFF) is currently open to qualified investors, targeting a first close of USD 30–50M against a full fund target of USD 100M. The Fund offers a preferred return of 10% and targets 20–25% gross returns p.a., with quarterly distributions.
SOURCES
• Top Macadamia Nuts Exports & Imports by Country Plus Average Prices
• South Africa's Macadamia Industry Grows Despite Export Uncertainty | USDA FAS
• Macadamia Nuts Market Size & Share Analysis
• Top Importers of Macadamia Nuts
• Value Chain Analysis of Macadamia Nuts in Kenya | CBI
DISCLAIMER
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, tax, or financial advice. No advisory or client relationship is created. Nurture and its affiliates may advise on, arrange, or participate in transactions in the sectors discussed. Data are drawn from sources believed reliable, but no representation or warranty as to accuracy or completeness is given. Not directed at any person where distribution would be contrary to applicable law or regulation.