After nine months of the competition, six business teams emerged with viable concepts worth supporting for development.

Kosmos Energy will provide US$50,000 in seed funding to two of these businesses, as well as sponsor them through a twelve-month incubation period at the Meltwater School of Technology (MEST) where they will learn how to turn their ideas into profitable businesses.  The KIC selected teams are:

• AgroInnova, with its product ‘AKOKOTAKRA’, is an enterprise mobile and web-based management system that enables poultry farmers to record, monitor, and track their operations in real time. With this innovative and comprehensive tool, poultry farm managers will have their farms at their fingertips for more effective and efficient operations.  Their product will help poultry farmers in Ghana monitor and grow their businesses.

• QualiTrace has developed a product to authenticate, track, and trace crop protection products used by farmers to increase their yields. Using a mobile validation system, the product aims to ensure that farmers and consumers in Ghana can identify genuine farm inputs and quality food produce. This tool will also help to thwart counterfeiting agricultural inputs in Ghana, a problem that accounts for the loss of about $1.5 trillion globally on annual basis.

In addition to the winners of the AgriTech Challenge, four other promising business teams who competed will be funded or supported by KIC partners:

• Unlimited, which provides simple livestock management software, called AniTrack, that identifies and tracks the health status of individual livestock through RFID technology, is being funded by the Meltwater School of Technology and Entrepreneurship (MEST)

• Complete Farmer, which provides agribusiness solutions services for an identified niche market of individuals through a practical, personalised and customised farming experience, is being funded by the Premium Bank of Ghana, with incubation sponsored by Kosmos

• Agroseal, which is a logistics and transportation service company providing a platform which connects aggregators of fruits and vegetables to large scale farmers for timely truck service, is partnering with AgroCenta – which uses an online platform that connects smallholder farmers directly to a wider online market to sell their commodities.  Agrocenta found success when they participated in KIC’s market research, skills training and capacity building program.

• Rent-a-farm, which provides an agricultural land rental marketplace for renters who want to access arable land, is partnering CompleteFarmer to complement the company’s agribusiness solutions services.

The winners were selected from the more than 400 young entrepreneurs who applied to be a part of the 2017 AgriTech Challenge, out of which 200 were shortlisted and interviewed, with a final 106 forming 25 businesses (teams) to compete for the ultimate prize.

Commenting on the successful program, Kosmos Energy vice president and country manager Joe Mensah said: “The second AgriTech Challenge succeeded beyond our expectations, with all six finalist business teams receiving funding or other support from the Kosmos Innovation Center and its partners.

The quality of the teams, their entrepreneurial spirit, and the potential of their business ideas is a testament to the work everyone at the Kosmos Innovation Center has done in its short history. We look forward to similar success in the future with the AgriTech Challenge and our new acceleration program, which is aimed at helping established small and mid-sized businesses reach the next stage of growth.”

We look forward to similar success in the future with the AgriTech Challenge and our new acceleration program, which is aimed at helping established small and mid-sized businesses reach the next stage of growth.”

The Minister for food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto who attended the function indicated that encouraging the youth to go into Agricuture through  the use of technological innovation is commendable

”  the goal of the Kosmos Innovation Center is to harness the youth to leverage information, communication, and technology (ICT) and innovation to solve some of the country’s development problems, the choice of agriculture as your first focus sector, and particularly blazing the trail in nurturing and creating E-Agribusiness in Ghana must be commended!” he said.

“This intervention is timely and appropriate as the sector increasingly requires an infusion of new life to attract our youth to find their space within the agricultural value chain”, he further stated.

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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Kosmos Innovation Center announces winners of 2017 AgriTech challenge appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

It has become evident that, with recent trends especially in other African countries including Kenya, that technology is a major driver of effective and profitable agricultural production.

The solutions to various challenges facing agricultural development in Ghana are only a click away through a technology provided by AgroCenta.

AgroCenta provides an end-to-end solution for smallholder farmers in the post-harvest value chain from farm to market, enabling them to have direct interaction with the market, rather than through ‘profit-cutting’ middlemen.

While this is extremely cost-effective, it also enables the smallholder farmer produce more without the fear of losing produce over lack of buyers.

The company, which has been operational for almost a year, has as its cardinal mandates, an objective to enable farmers upload information about their produce online, and get buyers immediately (AgroTrade), access in-land shipping/carting services for the transportation of produce from the farm site (Truckr), and provide information on market produce values and pricing, weather information among other vital information, to promote competitive pricing and quality production (Agroinfo).

Co-Founder of the AgroCenta, Francis Obirikorang told Citi FM‘s Bernard Avle on the Citi Innovation Heroes series on Tuesday that, smallholder farmers in Ghana suffer from exploitative buying from middlemen, who buy their produce at very cheap prices and resell at exorbitant prices in urban centers.

“What we provide is an online platform that eliminates all these middlemen. We connect smallholder farmers directly to buyers in the urban areas…This is where farmers are able to leverage and sell their produce at very competitive prices based on the information that they have,” he said.

With about 30 Agrocenta agents who assist farmers use the only system, the company is hopeful of redefining agriculture in the country.

Nearly 7,000 smallholder farmers have already subscribed to the service, a development Agrocenta believes, is a considerable impact that makes its model worth replicating in other parts of the country.

The experiences of the many farmers using Agrocenta’s platform includes a smallholder farmer making as much 30 cedis profit on each of the 2,000 bags of soya beans she sold.

On transport, about 3,000 smallholder farmers actively use Agrocenta’s ‘truckr’ service. The service allows for smallholder farmers to have access to ready cargo trucks to transport their produce from the farm gate to the market.

“We’ve partnered with the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), the truck division, to allow the smallholder farmer in any remote area request for a truck through a text message or a phone call. We match the truck based on their proximity and connect them. In doing this, we reduce the waiting time associated with waiting for trucks to transport produce,” Francis Obirikorang noted.

The company also reaches its subscribers will timely market information such as prices of produce among others in text and voice formats in their preferred local languages weekly, to enable them make information decisions based on the changes.

To sustain the model ran by AgroCenta, the company charges buyers what it terms ‘transaction cost’ as payment for the convenience it offers.

Mr. Obirikorang says although the company is actively operating, it seeks partnership from government and other relevant private sector agencies to scale it up.

“AgroCenta can actually be scaled up. We are looking for partnerships. We are looking at working with government to implement this solution. We have the technical know-how, we are in the field working with the smallholder farmers… We are looking out for companies to buy from us, and we are looking for government to help us replicate this platform across various platforms. ”

AgroCentra is determined to launch and be fully operational in the Upper East, Upper West and Brong Ahafo regions in the second quarter of 2017, after a successful pilot in some districts of the Northern Region.

As technology grows to become an integral part of modern-day farming, AgroCenta is positioning itself to be a key force in the sector, and is seeking to cover the entire country with its solution, and extend to other West African countries by the end of 2020.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @jnyabor

The post Citi Innovation Heroes: AgroCenta’s technology giving farmers greater value appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.