AgriDev runs two businesses out of one Beirut office. One is an agribusiness consultancy that works with cooperatives, donors, and rural producers across the MENA region. The other is a food processing line, sold under the Kanafar brand, that puts the team's own zaatar mixes and sundried tomatoes on shelves.
The combination is deliberate. AgriDev was founded in 2017 by a team of agricultural and socioeconomic experts who together carry more than 15 years of project development and implementation experience in the region. Its stated mission is to strengthen cooperation among agribusiness value chain actors so rural producers can grow their livelihoods through efficiency, competitiveness, and climate resilience.
Five Service Lines, One Agribusiness Playbook
On the consultancy side, AgriDev is organized around five service areas: technical assessment and outreach, project management, capacity building, proposal development, and product development. In practice, that translates into designing agriculture strategies, running market and value chain analyses, conducting damage and needs assessments, and initiating and training producers' cooperatives.
The firm also writes feasibility studies, designs curricula for capacity building programs, monitors and evaluates livelihood projects, develops local brands, and runs national outreach through customized vulnerability assessments. The work is anchored in what AgriDev calls nature-based solutions, an approach aimed at supporting decent jobs, keeping natural resources intact, and helping rural communities adapt to climate change. The firm frames the stakes plainly: when those systems fail, migration, food insecurity, and conflict follow.
Building the Kanafar Brand From the Ground Up
The second half of AgriDev's business is the production side. The team develops agriculture products end to end, taking them from concept and design through to marketing strategy and activation. The in-house brand, Kanafar, currently includes a series of zaatar mixes and a sundried tomato line.
AgriDev builds the Kanafar products to compete at market level, not to fill a development project's deliverables list. The firm credits that to the expertise of its in-house food experts, who treat the brand as both an output and a working laboratory for the consultancy's product development service.
The Two People Steering the Firm
Fadia Ghadban leads AgriDev as CEO. Yara Abdel Ahad runs product development. The leadership pairing maps to the company's two sides, with one focused on delivery for institutional clients and donors and the other on building food products positioned to compete at market level.
A Beirut Base, a MENA Brief
AgriDev is based in Beirut and is part of the Berytech community of startups and SMEs in Lebanon. Its working area stretches across the wider MENA region, where the founding team brings more than 15 years of project development and implementation experience.
Learn more about AgriDev.
