AgroCenta, KIC encourage young graduates to self-employ
When preparation meets opportunity, the result is obvious – success. This is exactly how the painstaking preparations of Francis Obirikorang and Michael Ocansey to start a business of using information and communications technology (ICT) to solve some challenges in the agricultural value chain became a reality and is already making waves across emerging economies.
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The pair have successfully started AgroCenta after taking part in the 2016 AgriTech Challenge, a grant competition organised by the Kosmos Innovation Centre (KIC), the social investment programme by Kosmos Energy Ghana.
Both with science backgrounds, they conceptualised AgroCenta while doing white-collar jobs and decided to participate in the KIC AgriTech Challenge (www.kosmosinnovationcenter.com) in April last year. The concept was to leverage ICT to provide market access for the grains value chain, starting with maize, rice, sorghum, millet and wheat.
They were among the first batch of ‘AgriTechies’ but dropped out only after the market research of the competition that eventually granted a total of $100,000 in grants to two start-ups. The brief stint with KIC provided Francis and Michael the impetus and equipped them with the market information that they had been waiting for to make a surge.
The ‘AgriTechies’ in one of the brain-storming sessions
Mr Obirikorang, who is the acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the now established AgroCenta, said they participated in seminars, interacted with industry practitioners and academics as well as made field visits to farms, transporters and agro-processing centres.
“Before joining the competition, we had worked on the concept for about five months, piloted it and were already talking to some potential investors to help us build the company,” he said.
Francis Obirikorang (left) and Michael Ocansey, founders of AgroCenta
Not only did the field visits in the maiden KIC AgriTech Challenge add value to their piloted project, Francis and Michael believed that they would be better off working together than to take on new partners as the competition required of participants. These two reasons would nudge them to exit the competition at that early stage, beaming with smiles, not tears as the case may be for leavers from such ‘reality shows.’
Start-up birthed
The business is an online platform that connects smallholder farmers in the staple food (rice, maize, millet and soybean) value chain to a wider market. “We connect smallholder farmers to large off-takers such as breweries, feed producers, food processing companies and we virtually eliminate the exploitative buying which our middle people indulge in,” the acting CEO of AgroCenta, Mr Obirikorang, said.
One of the contesting groups making a presentation
Currently focused on the three northern regions – Upper West, Upper East and Northern regions, AgroCenta also provides on-demand trucks for the distribution of farm produce. Already, the start-up has about 8,000 farmers it works with, 4,000 of which it connects to larger markets.
AgroCenta employs over 40 people, including 30 agents, four agronomists, three regional managers and data entry personnel. The agents are the field people who liaise and work directly with the farmers.
Francis, a materials engineering graduate from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and Michael, a computer science graduate, from the Regent University consider their experience in the competition worth more than the $100,000 grant prize at stake and did not look back in starting their business.
They have since been able to raise seed capital of $100,000 and gone on to win other prizes and grants meant for social investment start-ups and pro-farmer businesses.
“We’ve won the Fincluders Start-up Challenge in Amman, Jordan, with $20,000 prize and a grant of $10,000 from ProHaus VC, a US-based Venture Capital firm and Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), an agro-based organisation which supports the use of ICT in agriculture. We’ve also worked with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the CTA to improve our business propositions and delivery,” Francis said.
Milestones
So far, AgroCenta has been able to develop a mobile and web application platform (http://www.agrocenta.com), which it uses to profile farmers they work with onto an Internet-connected platform.
The profile comes with information on the crops they deal in and stocks availability. This guides the buyers to make purchasing decisions.
AgroCenta is also building a financial inclusion platform called AgroPay that will process payments for smallholder farmers, enable them to access credit facilities from financial institutions and also practice savings, using their mobile phones.
The suite of technological services AgroCenta is building will provide an end-to-end solution for smallholder farmers to access the market platform, access the on-demand trucks and logistics platform, access an e-extension advisory and information platform, and ultimately provide inclusion for the unbanked rural smallholder farmers.
Opportunities
Francis and Michael see a brighter future in the business and the agricultural industry in the country.
“There are a lot of opportunities in agriculture but the sector has not received the needed attention it deserves. This is why you see a lot of donor funds into the sector which are not yielding the desired outcomes because it has been the same old ways of doing things,” they said.
The AgroCenta founders believe the KIC AgriTech approach is in the right direction, as it aptly created the awareness that the banking industry and the like were not the only job opportunity available to young graduates.
“From where we sit, we can see a lot of opportunities in agriculture and what Kosmos has started is the way to go. We encourage other young people to take advantage of what the Kosmos Innovation Centre offers. Every aspect of their programme without the ultimate prize is enough to build your confidence to reach out for success,” Mr Obirikorang said.
AgriTech 2017
The KIC is a corporate social investment programme of the oil and gas company aimed at making a transformational intervention in sectors of the Ghanaian economy. The pilot on agriculture is to make technology an integral part of the solutions to challenges facing the sector.
“We want to stay in agriculture for a few years and see the impact before moving on to any other sector. We’ll stay with agriculture to ensure the foundation is really strong. Moving to another sector now will amount to spreading ourselves too thin,” Kosmos Vice-President and Country Manager, Mr Joe Mensah, told the Daily Graphic.
KIC gave $100,000 seed funding to the two agribusiness start-ups which emerged the overall winners of the maiden agribusiness-technology competition in September last year.
This is in addition to an all-expenses-paid market research, business advisory technical assistance and capacity building programme before and during incubation.
Each team, now a registered corporate entity made up of young graduates from tertiary institutions, is also receiving mentorship at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) to help them turn their ideas into viable businesses.
Outlook
Having put their shoulders to the wheel, the folks at AgroCenta see their start-up growing into an expansive business network that will not only thrive in Ghana, but across Africa, the Mediterranean and Middle East as well as other emerging markets, as they had similar challenges in the agricultural value chain.
Already, Francis said, AgroCenta had been invited by a strategic partner in Sierra Leone to pilot the innovation there in association with the Sierra Leonean government. They are also looking to expand to the Nigerian market within the shortest possible time.
(A Kosmos Innovation Centre 2016 AgriTech Challenge participant)