Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: Agri-entrepreneur dances to his own rhythm in Ghana

[Bulls n Bears]

 <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> 

 

 

 

Based on a realisation that any line of work that is impactful requires
discipline and a positive change in behaviour, David Asiamah founded Agro
Mindset, a firm that specialises in agribusiness ventures in Ghana.

Agro Mindset’s focus is to run highly profitable agricultural enterprises
with long-term growth potential. It further aims to be a leader of robust
agribusiness models that consistently produces safe, quality and affordable
foodstuffs in a financially, socially and environmentally sustainable
manner. Recently, Agro Mindset formed a partnership with EvancoPhamlands to
grow coconuts, mangoes and other cash crops for local consumption and for
export.

How did this all start?

When he was a third-year undergraduate agriculture student, Asiamah
recognised the opportunities in this sector. This, combined with his
awareness of the high levels of youth unemployment in Ghana and his desire
to be self-employed, motivated him.

“At that time, I knew that I wanted to become a farmer,” Asiamah recalls.

His desire landed him in England for his postgraduate studies where he also
worked as an intern at Vine House Farm in Peterborough. During his
internship he did over 1,000 hours of tractor driving, supervised colleague
workers, managed a 24,000 free-range poultry unit, and served as quality
control officer for harvested produce when the farm was growing vegetable
crops for wholesale and supermarkets.

After he had graduated with an MSc degree in agriculture and development at
the University of Reading in the UK, he returned to work at Vine House Farm
to save money for a commercial farm in Ghana. With passion and by leveraging
human and social capital, Asiamah started this commercial farm in March 2014
– at the age of 25.

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

With Agro Mindset, Asiamah is running the farm based on ethical principles,
producing poultry and quality assured organic foods. Within the first three
years of operations they have produced and sold some seven million eggs.
They also have a vibrant agricultural education programme and offer
logistics services to farmers to effect links to markets. Through their
network, new farmers and existing smallholders who have incomplete,
ineffective and inequitable market access, are enabled to reduce their costs
of operation and enhance productivity. So far, over 32,000 youths have
benefited from their campaigns.

Agro Mindset is currently investing its time, resources and energy in the
development of three new divisions: a logistics division focusing on market
facilitation via input procurement, supply distribution modelling and
license/franchise opportunities; an academy division focused on free
agricultural education via technology platforms; and a fellowship division
focused on developing a network of entrepreneurs, amongst others.

“Our future outlook is to adopt more innovative, cutting-edge technologies
to produce animal feed, manage waste, and construct solar power plants,”
says Asiamah, who has already won several awards including the African
Achiever Awards for Agricultural Excellence, the Future Awards for
Agriculture, and Ghama UK Based Achievements (GUBA) award for recognition of
innovation and best practice in corporate sustainability.

Surely it couldn’t have been that easy. He must have faced some challenges?

“Building a startup is hard,” Asiamah reveals. “Initially no one believes
in you.”

Financing the entire project, along with bio-security, were huge initial
problems. Inflation also caused serious drawbacks, and this affected
Asiamah’s ability to purchase much needed inputs. Land tenure systems and
ownership problems are real too.

“Some of the challenges emerging economies like Ghana are grappling with
are not peculiar to us. Africa does not have a monopoly on crisis. And, of
course, the West also does not have a monopoly on solutions.” He believes
the solution to the 12.6% of global youth unemployment is entrepreneurship.

Nevertheless, Asiamah has big plans for Agro Mindset and for Ghana.

He says about 60% of the country’s population is engaged in some form of
agricultural activity and he hopes to establish Ghana’s first agriculture
focused research-based policy think-tank.

Asiamah says a high level of engagement with the government is necessary if
Agro Mindset wants to reach its objectives of influencing job creation,
post-graduate employment prospects and overall involvement of the youth in
agriculture. But for Agro Mindset to reach these objectives, the government
needs to create and maintain an enabling environment.

Asiamah believes that transformation of traditional agriculture in Africa
into a highly profitable enterprise will depend on education, policy, equity
investment, commodities markets, future markets, innovation, farmer-friendly
financial instruments, revolving lines of credit, big data and
communication.

“Food will be the new gold in Africa over the next few decades,” Asiamah
projects. “This continent will dance to a new rhythm. Not because someone
keeps trying to teach a new dance – but because one or two people dance to
their own rhythm and eventually their music will be the beat that people
dance to.”

Anything we can learn from his experiences?

Asiamah believes our abilities are moulded through service. Service, he
says, produces the “will do” spirit and not just the “can do” spirit.

For entrepreneurs looking to work in the agricultural sector, Asiamah says
preparation is everything. There is so much uncertainty in agriculture, such
as the weather and politics. “It takes persistence to achieve anything in
agriculture,” he says.—Howwemadeitinafrica 



David Asiamah

 

 

Invest Wisely!

Bulls n Bears 

 

Telephone:    <tel:%2B263%204%202927658> +263 4 2927658

Cellphone:      <tel:%2B263%2077%20344%201674> +263 77 344 1674

Alt. Email:    <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> info at bulls.co.zw  

Website:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AF
QjCNH8LYgdY55h-XKseuM8Kpr-JKdfhQ> www.bulls.co.zw 

Blog:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw%2Fblog&sa=D&sntz=1
&usg=AFQjCNFoIy6F9IXAiYnSoPSgWDYsr8Sqtw> www.bulls.co.zw/blog

Twitter:                  @bullsbears2010

LinkedIn:               Bulls n Bears Zimbabwe

Facebook:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FBullsBearsZimba
bwe&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGhb_A5rp4biV1dGHbgiAhUxQqBXA>
www.facebook.com/BullsBearsZimbabwe

Skype:         Bulls.Bears 



 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 236337 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listmail.bulls.co.zw/pipermail/bulls/attachments/20181009/d616d7ee/attachment-0001.bin>