Accra, Ghana
In 2012, Kwami Williams was studying at MIT to become a rocket scientist when he took a trip to his home country of Ghana with some of his classmates. There, he was introduced to the moringa, a sturdy tree dotting impoverished farming communities throughout the country. Williams, 20 at the time, was asked by the farmers he met if it was possible to make money from the moringa, called the “miracle tree” for its hardiness and multiple uses. Finding the answer to that question would change the trajectory of his life.
In the space of just a few years, Williams would go from studying space to selling beauty products sourced from the moringa, opening a new commercial opportunity for local farmers through the process. His company, MoringaConnect, is part of a wave of savvy young entrepreneurs who are turning to the country’s troubled agricultural sector, and the millions of farmers toiling in it, as source of inspiration for their ideas.
“Farmers are the origin of our business idea, and their input and participation have been invaluable in our success to date,” Williams says. “Our vertically integrated model is an evolution of ideas our farmers shared about guaranteeing their harvest, centralizing processing, and connecting it to distribution.”
Social startups
Though a commercially savvy business, MoringaConnect is what’s classified as a social enterprise, one that uses trade to address social and environmental problems. Most startup funding by traditional venture capital focuses on sectors like software, financial technology, and e-commerce, which may be riskier but can be more profitable businesses to build and sell or even take public. Social enterprise startups focus on income generation, but reinvest their profits into their social mission.
The number of social enterprise startups in Ghana has spiked since 2012, according to a 2016 report (pdf) by the British Council. The 98 social enterprise startups studied by the Council had created a total of 958 jobs between them (based on staff numbers in 2015), and generated a combined turnover of around 8 million Ghana cedi ($2 million).
Startups focused on agriculture and fisheries made up 33% of the total surveyed. This sector employs around half of the country’s working population, but World Bank statistics show there has been a sharp decline in the last decade of agriculture’s contribution to Ghana’s GDP, as the industry deals with challenges such as a lack of access to farming equipment, market information, and stable buyers.
In these challenges, some local startups see opportunity. With youth unemployment estimated to be at 11.5% in 2016, a few young Ghanaians are increasingly choosing not to wait to get lucky in a job. Instead they’re identifying the gaps in the market and are tackling them, finding ways to not only help farmers’ prospects, but to create wealth.
“Many young people are seeing agriculture as a sector they can develop and grow in scale,” says Dziffa Ametam, a lecturer at Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Ghana, which helps young entrepreneurs develop startups.
Mobile agriculture
Mobile technology also has a prominent role in a number of the agriculture startups, like Trotro Tractor, which has an interesting agricultural twist on the sharing economy. The company, launched last year, links farmers with tractor owners in Ghana via mobile phone codes. Farmers dial a code to request the use of a tractor, which they can then pay for with mobile money. Trotro Tractor’s founders include a cattle farmer and a vegetable farmer.
