Pharo Ventures
For-profit social enterprises that create jobs, add value locally, and generate the revenue that will make the Foundation self-reliant: edible oil, fisheries, concrete, health and venture building.
Pharo Ready-Mix Concrete plant, Somaliland.
Profit in service of permanence.
Pharo Ventures builds and scales profitable businesses that create jobs, generate economic value, and reinvest profits to sustain and expand our impact. It is the engine of the productivity mission.
Even when people are trained and infrastructure is in place, jobs have to exist for the system to work. Ventures create them as genuine businesses, not subsidised programmes.
The commercial discipline is deliberate. Our hope is that, if the ventures succeed, proceeds from them will cover our country overheads and support our development programmes.
Skills and infrastructure still need somewhere to work.
A region can have schools and water and still lack the formal jobs that turn capability into income. Markets alone are slow to create them where value is exported as raw material.
Pure philanthropy struggles here too: a subsidised enterprise is fragile, and a foundation funded only by donations is never fully in control of its future.
Our businesses
Five ventures, each a real business that creates jobs, keeps value local, and contributes to self-reliance. Select one for its full story.
Edible Oil Plant
A plant processing sesame and sunflower oil locally.
KenTuna
A sustainably caught tuna value chain with Across Agriculture.
Pharo Health
Diagnostic and clinical services in Assosa and Addis.
Concrete & Machine Rentals
Ready-mix concrete and an affordable-housing formwork pilot.
Kigali Venture Studio
A studio building founder-led, real-economy ventures, starting with agriculture.
Our impact
Commercial results in service of a developmental goal.
What we learnt
A business is a more durable employer than a programme.
Jobs that depend on a profit are more permanent than jobs that depend on a grant.
Keep the value-adding step at home.
Across oil, fish and concrete, the lesson repeats: capture processing locally and the jobs and margin stay with it.
Ventures are hard, and honesty matters.
Not every venture works. The discipline is to judge each one honestly, hold our nerve where the case is sound, and exit when it is not, rather than letting sunk cost decide.
Self-reliance is a strategy.
Tying ventures to covering country overheads by 2030 turns commercial success into independence for the whole Foundation.
Invest, partner, or invite us to present.
For family offices, philanthropists and foundations exploring operator-led capital deployment.