Riyadh Group, a Bahraini diversified conglomerate, is partnering with AVC Global, a Washington-based agricultural value chain company, to develop a new agricultural supply collaboration in Africa.

I recently had the opportunity to chat briefly with Sergey Tsvetkov, Executive Vice President of the Riyada Group and AVC Global co-founders, Leo A. Giacometto and David Todd, to learn about their new venture.

What were the original motivations behind this collaboration?

Sergey Tsvetkov: When the founder of the Riyada Group, HRH Shaikha Dheya bint Ebrahim Al Khalifa and I looked at the facts and AVC’s approach, we saw an opportunity to collaborate with AVC on something truly profound, which will supply agricultural products from Africa and Asia to the Middle East.  We see Bahrain and Riyada Group as well positioned to be the key founding partner in this supply chain project.

This project has been in intense R&D for over a year and is just now coming out of stealth mode. We are developing and deploying a cohesive end-to-end agricultural supply chain and distribution network, integrated with an innovative supply chain financing and infrastructure development fund.  The technology platform will develop and incorporate a distributed ledger, distributed applications, Internet of things, artificial intelligence, and smart contracts”.