Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: Impatient optimist takes charge of livestock mortality in Ghana

[Bulls n Bears]

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After six years of working as a journalist, Alima Bawah took a moment to
assess the challenges faced by rural communities and decided to tackle one
of the problems herself. Through her storytelling, she had identified
livestock mortality as one of the biggest problems facing rural dwellers in
Ghana’s livestock industry.

Today, Bawah is the co-founder of CowTribe, an on-demand mobile
subscription service connecting veterinary services to farmers to reduce
livestock mortality and increase productivity and income of farmers.


Take us back to the beginning of this business


CowTribe was launched out of the personal experiences of its founders,
Bawah and Peter Awin, and their passion to solve a social problem. They both
grew up in rural communities and their education was dependent on the
successful breeding of their families’ livestock.

When Bawah later became a journalist, she focused on stories that would
help develop these underserved communities. But the speed at which the
government was addressing this problem was too slow for her liking and she
decided to resign. She had had enough of story-telling – it was time to act.

At first, Bawah started an NGO that provided parents with entrepreneurial
skills which would help them to afford to keep their children in school. But
the desired change wasn’t happening fast enough for her. About a year later
she met up with Awin, a friend who is also a trained development
practitioner with experience in selling crop insurance to farmers in rural
areas.

They pulled together to focus their attention on livestock, which could be
a quicker income for parents, and in May 2016 they launched CowTribe. The
company provides veterinary treatment to economical animals (goat, sheep,
chicken and cattle) and sometimes pigs, depending on the geographical area.
So far, CowTribe has served about 30,000 farmers in 150 communities across
the northern, upper eastern, and western regions of Ghana.


How did the company grow into the business it is today?


In the beginning, Temale-based CowTribe coordinated emergency veterinary
services to farmers, but due to the distances involved, turnaround times
were 24 hours.

The partners decided to leverage mobile technology, since most farmers have
feature phones. They also switched from offering emergency services to
providing preventative vaccination services. They reasoned that if they were
able to deliver timely vaccines to animals, they would be able to reduce the
pace at which farmers needed them for emergency cases. “And that has worked
for us. Now, we have very few emergency cases.”

CowTribe provide livestock owners with a Near Field Communication card (NFC
card) which holds the farmer’s information and serves a wallet. The NFC card
is similar to a biometric card. When placed at the back of a smartphone, it
fetches information from the card to the phone – allowing the field agent to
read farmer’s information, including the number of animals. Farmers using
these cards can call CowTribe anytime for service delivery. They also
receive advisory messages and notifications to let them know when their
animals are due for vaccination.

To provide a seamless service to farmers, CowTribe hired and trained about
200 community agents to register farmers, facilitate vaccine delivery, and
attend to petty issues like wound dressing. CowTribe also works in
partnership with the government’s veterinary services department to provide
vaccination for livestock at about one cent per animal, of which CowTribe
gets 10% commission.


She must have faced some challenges?


“When we started, it was quite difficult to get people to mentor us,” Bawah
recalls. “Although we work in the animal care sector, it was quite lonely
because our model is the only one strictly focused on vaccine delivery. We
had no one to learn from and there was little literature to review. Access
to advisory services was quite a critical challenge until we enrolled into
the Fledge accelerator programme. Now, we have lots of people that serve as
advisers.”

Poor communication and road network in rural communities also affects
CowTribe’s service delivery in rural communities where most of its customers
reside.

Finance was also a challenge. “My partner and I started with our financial
savings but along the line we ran out of cash. As an entrepreneur in Ghana,
it is difficult to find angel investors or grants to work with. It was
difficult until we wrote a grant proposal to the Dutch government. They
funded us to run a training programme for veterinarians within the country.”

CowTribe is currently focusing on getting more women farmers to access its
programme. They hope to register 10,000 women chicken farmers this year in
order to deliver Newcastle vaccines to them.


Noted. Anything we can learn from his/her experiences?


Bawah, a 2018 Queens Young Leader, believes passion should trump money when
considering the launch of a business. “If you want to make money, find
something that solves a real problem,” she says. “If you are working on a
real problem that you are passionate about, you are halfway in succeeding.

“It might be frustrating at a point, but when you look back at the people
whose problem you are solving, you will be able to find the strength to keep
going even when the going is tough.”—Howwemadeitinafrica 



Alima Bawah

 

 

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