IWD spotlight, Cotton Farmer - Marie-Louise Annan
In celebration of International Women's Day, The Mirror highlights a woman who is achieving success in a career traditionally dominated by men.
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Miss Marie-Louise Annan is a Cotton farmer who aims to be the premier source and exporter of high grade organic cotton.
She is the Founder & CEO of The Mishkan Group, a people-centric, tech-enabled social impact startup where they 100% organically farm high grade non-gmo Cotton and process into threads, yarn, fabrics and more, using sustainable and regenerative practices to sell to businesses globally.
Miss Annan (right) and her family
Currently, her business has secured financial grants and acres of lands to fully venture into the production and to run more in-depth tests.
In addition, she is an IGNITE 2019 alumna (under GuzaKuza) and a graduate of The Founder Institute, a pre-seed global start-up accelerators program.
In an interview last Tuesday, she shared her love for drawing, dancing, God, belief in hard work and humility. Read on as we delve into her life and career.
Miss Marie-Louise Annan
Born to a Chemical Engineer, Dr Joseph Annan, and a homemaker, Mrs Melanie Annan, Miss Annan’s journey has been one of faith and a love for rural development.
She described herself as a people person who believes disability should never be a barrier to contributing to society and so aims to provide equal opportunities for everyone.
As such, at her farm in the Ashanti Region, she employs physically challenged individuals in diverse roles, including planting, harvesting, cleaning, ginning, threading and spinning.
Miss Annan, raised in Ghana, attended Akosombo International School for her Senior High education in the Eastern Region.
She is a University of Kent alumna, earning a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Economics with French.
The entrepreneur said been led strongly by God, she enrolled in a Bible School at the International Bible Institute of London, graduating with a Diploma and Higher Diploma in Theology and Biblical Studies.
She also holds a Prince II (Foundation) and a post-graduate certificate in Project Management.
Mishkan Group and cotton farm
According to her, the brand name, ‘Mishkan’ literally means, , "The Dwelling Place of He Who Dwells" and denotes the active participation of God Himself coming to dwell, wherever He chooses to dwell with people; in so doing His Presence brings restoration, healing, redemption as is with her life and business.
Miss Annan said she started working on her dream of being a cotton farmer nearly 13 years ago.
When I started, I thought of offering training and employment in cloth weaving and batiking to be sold to businesses in high-end Luxury that would allow me to pay individuals a higher than average wage so they could leave the streets and be able to cater for themselves with dignity and pride.
The Mishkan Group recently won a grant to facilitate the business
Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), the quality of fabrics I was coming across were not what I knew my target market would want and decided to go into organic Cotton farming and processing myself.
Miss Marie-Louise Annan is the Chief Executive Officer of Mishkan group, a start-up cotton production company
"I have always strongly believed that Agribusiness is the main avenue through which this can be done so I registered my business between 2011 and 2012 and started doing my research into the crop.
Interestingly, during my undergraduate thesis in 2006, I found out that Ghana used to grow cotton back in the 1960s to 1980s but it was not effective due to some reasons.” she said.
She added that in 2018, with knowledge gained from her research, she returned to Ghana to begin the actual legwork of looking for a conducive place to start planting, which led her to tour several villages in some regions.
She said she got assistance from a Chief (she preferred not name) of the village where her farm is who gave her land she could test-run the crop.
“We did that last two years and it came out beautifully and each sprout was quite sizeable. With a core team, consisting of Business Developer, Peter Gambrah, and Farm Manager, Eric Boakye-Yiadom and others, they have sourced experts to run multiple tests in order to achieve utmost softness, smoothness, absorption, sturdiness consistency in colour”.
“We are currently at the ‘Proof of Concept’ stage which has seen us plant, harvest and hand-spun part of our samples into threads.
Thankfully, her business has received financial grants from the MasterCard Foundation and the ABSA Bank to enable them develop their Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and run more in-depths tests with the help of experts.
To strengthen her impact, Ms Annan said she joined forces with the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPA) and other agencies to help scale up her business. 
Miss Annan with some members of her team
Birth of The Mishkan Group
For my final year University theses, I wrote on, "The Problems Of Developing Countries Dependent On Primary Commodities: A Case Study Of Ghana" (2006); in my first year of Bible School I wrote on, "The Great Commission: Equipping The Global Church In The fight Against Poverty In Africa" (2007).
For my 2nd year of Bible School also I wrote on: "Missions And Development Work As One" (2008)." The Mishkan Group is literally birthed from these three theses as we seek to positively impact the lives of people, the communities in which we work and the economy of our Country through a redemptive model that uses a vertically integrative and circular Agribusiness model.
Hobbies and Future goals
Miss Annan also loves to dance and sketch as well as to write, read - especially anything on History and Archeology, acting and poetry.
Having recently returned as a delegate at the ITC/SheTrades Summit in line with the WTO 13th Ministerial Conference held in Abu Dhabi, she is also rather passionate about advocating for Women to be more active in their businesses being built to be able to trade globally.
For her goals, the Entrepreneur is working with her team on developing their MVP, add more people to their team to enable them gain investment that will allow the business to scale.
Although cost-intensive, she aims to revive the country’s cotton industry to be export driven, organically grown and of the highest grade.
Ms Annan believes being physically challenged should not be a barrier to earing an income
In her farewell, she advised fellow women to be confident, learn, pray, stay humble, and avoid unnecessarily overworking themselves to prove their worth in careers.
Miss Annan loves the water
From the farmer, Miss Annan, “Do not doubt your value and let us support each other to greatness”.
Writer’s email: [email protected]
