Onyeka Akumah, the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Farmcrowdy, discusses his commitment to transforming Nigeria’s agriculture sector through technology.
Farmcrowdy’s excellent contributions to agriculture have been recognised both in Nigeria and beyond. On 22 May 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari awarded Farmcrowdy the National Productivity Order of Merit, in recognition of its creative and innovative contributions to economic growth and development in Nigeria.
Flora IP (FI): In 2016, you founded Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s 1st digital agriculture platform focused on connecting farm sponsors with farmers in Nigeria. Can you tell me more about Farmcrowdy?
Onyeka Akumah (OA): Farmcrowdy is a digital agriculture platform that connects small-scale farmers with investors to boost food production.
I developed the initial idea for Farmcrowdy because I was interested in investing in agriculture which led me to look for a farmer to work with. I found a cassava farmer, but we had three key problems. First, he couldn’t access loans from the bank to expand his farm. Second, he didn’t have the technical know-how to grow his farm. Third, he couldn’t access the right market to sell his farm produce to earn a decent margin. In addition, I found that although there were other Nigerians interested in investing in agriculture, they didn’t know farmers that they could trust with their investment.
Accordingly, I decided to build a platform with friends who had different areas of expertise, but we were all connected by interests in agricultural investments.
We co-founded Farmcrowdy to connect both sides of the divide. Farmers and sponsors.
Sponsors receive updates of small-scale farmers progress through pictures, texts, and videos. In return, small-scale farmers get sponsorship in form of farm input and technical know-how to improve their farming practices. Farmcrowdy deals with the market access for the small-scale farmers – we sell their farm produce, which helps them earn a decent margin from farming.
Farmcrowdy went live on 14 September 2016, but it was launched effectively on 14 November 2016. We currently have a team of over 30 people.
FI: You studied Applied Information Technology at Sikkim Manipal University, India and worked with start-ups such as Travelbeta.com and Anozim Group. How did your academic and professional backgrounds play a role in your establishment of Farmcrowdy?
OA: My background helped with me becoming a well-rounded technology person. I think it was about understanding how to use technology to solve real problems for people. I will give more credit to the entrepreneurial genes I have in me as a Nigerian 😊. A typical Nigerian wants to do business and wants to make profit. I also give credit to my parents because they were responsible for ensuring that I wasn’t going to relax and expect to rely on only one stream of income. My parents consistently advised me to read a lot of books on entrepreneurship. That was the journey for me. While working, I always wanted to explore other areas of creating wealth for myself. That led me to all the ventures I worked on.
The establishment of Farmcrowdy and Travelbeta resulted from my interest in using technology to solve problems in the areas of agriculture, real estate, and transportation.
With Travelbeta, I helped to launch and establish the business, but I do not own Travelbeta.
Anozim group was a service based business that I started in 2005 and closed in 2015. We had a couple of reputable clients we worked for. I was happy about its progress, however, it was a service based business that required a lot of interpersonal relationship building which I couldn’t commit to. I was more inclined towards products.
Farmcrowdy is the most successful of all the ventures that I have personally launched.
Farmcrowdy’s success is not solely because of my educational background. It has succeeded because of my desire to build businesses, to employ people, and to solve problems.
I was tired of hearing issues around food scarcity in Nigeria when we have one of the best soils anywhere in the world to grow as much food as we require to feed ourselves. I also noticed that there were limited technology companies focused on solving food security.
That was my inspiration. The big problem- food insecurity in Nigeria. Potential- over 38 million small-scale farmers and the rich natural resources for farming.
FI: By December 2017, Farmcrowdy had engaged with 2,000 farmers. How would you describe Farmcrowdy’s impact in Nigeria so far?
OA: Farmcrowdy has had a significant impact in the lives of farmers. We have introduced farmers to new ways of funding projects on the farm, while increasing their capacity to learn more skills, and giving them market access to sell their farm produce. This has grown the referrals we have had from farmers. By the end of this year, we would have worked with over 6,000 farmers. Our goal for the next five years is to have worked with about 50, 000 small-scale farmers and continue to grow their income by 80 percent annually.
FI: What has contributed to Farmcrowdy’s success so far?
OA: One of the biggest success factors for Farmcrowdy is our team– having the right people on the bus to drive this vision. We have had a good number of people come to Farmcrowdy as co-founders or employees who are driven by the same passion for empowering small-scale farmers. Second is our innovative use of technology to solve problems. We have found ourselves in the blue ocean where we are channelling innovations in the agriculture – technology sphere.
Other factors that contribute to our success are our investors and partners. Investors have guided us beyond simply providing finance. They have helped us to make the right decisions about how to grow as a business. Our first investor was Niche Capital. Their investments helped us pay for more people to join our team and helped us to build our technology. We also had GreenTec in our early days. After that, we got into the Techstars Atlanta program, through which we got more investors from the United States (US).
We have partners that help us design our protocol for the farmers. We also have input partners- (seed and fertiliser), as well as partners that help with work coordination on farms.
We started out small. We did so deliberately so that we could learn from the mistakes we made. That helped us learn how to deal with certain challenges in agriculture.
FI: You mentioned that you have dealt with certain challenges. Can you share examples of challenges that Farmcrowdy has faced so far?
OA: From the first day, we faced challenges. The first set of challenges we faced were challenges we could deal with because we started out small. If we started out big, we would have had a lot of bad scenarios. For example, when we first started, there were questions about insurance. About how to package the insurance, to protect us as managers of the project and to protect the sponsors capital as well. In learning how to design the insurance plan, we had to study things like the proximity of the farm to the market and logistics.
Recently, we have had challenges with getting buyers who would pay prices that allow decent margins, to make the investment attractive to sponsors. Furthermore, we have had to let go of some team members and change partners.
We have dealt with the challenges on a scale by scale level, which speaks to why we started small. As we are scaling up, we are dealing with new sets of challenges.
FI: What is your vision for Farmcrowdy?
OA: To boost food production in Nigeria -and as many countries as we find ourselves in the future- to achieve food security. We recently launched an online forum for agriculture which is going to sit on our mobile app for Farmcrowdy to continue drive conversations around agriculture.
We envision working with 50,000 small-scale farmers in five years of launching. That is, by 2021. We intend to expand our use of technology to solve other problems in the agricultural value chains.
FI: You were named 2017 Tech Startup CEO of the Year at the Nigeria Technology Awards, appointed to the E-Agric Stakeholders Forum by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in 2017, and made member of the Honorary Council of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce & Industry. What message do you have for other young Nigerians interested in contributing to the food and agriculture sectors?
OA: For young people looking to solve problems across agriculture value chains, they should look for problems that they can solve using technology. There are problems in logistics, warehousing, input provisions, exports, and market access.
Start small, learn fast, scale quick.
FI: As Nigeria is projected to be the third most-populous country in the world by 2050, what changes would you like to see in Nigeria food and agriculture sectors?
OA: I would like to see the active involvement of the private sector in policy making, alongside the government. The private sector is driven by profits and margins. If the private sector is actively involved in policy making, I believe we will gradually see changes that will have positive impacts in our generation and beyond. I also want to see the evolution of technology to transform the lives of farmers. In the future, perhaps a farmer’s bank dedicated to helping farmers – a bank that understands and meets the needs of farmers.
For more on Farmcrowdy and investing in agriculture, see here.
Photo credit: Farmcrowdy website.
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