Greater Accra, Ghana
Partner: BEIT Farms
Funder: USAID
Funding Mechanism: LASER (Long-term Assistance and Services for Research) PULSE (Partners for University-Led Solutions Engine)
Funder: Australia Direct Aid Program (Ghana)
Cocoa
6 months (January-June 2022 - ongoing)
We plan to deploy the technology platform for 250 farmers (80% women) and 4 coop officers
AgUnity V3 Application
96.000 smallholder farmers in Beit Farms’ ecosystem
The agriculture sector contributes significantly to Ghana’s GDP. In addition, more than half of the workforce is involved in agriculture. Therefore, this sector has a very bright future!
The covid-19 pandemic has had a heavy impact on the agricultural sector of Ghana, the effects of which are being compounded by the slow adoption of digital technologies within last mile communities.
Often suffering from ineffective communication lines and unaccountable trade systems, many goods are being sold below market price by desperate farmers. The AgUnity platform will help to introduce farmers to much larger value chains and global markets, creating effective and traceable communication lines and trade accounts.
The project outcomes are improving several aspects
Quantitative research was conducted at the end of March in Greater Accra with 60 cocoa farmers
The survey intends to identify their background, agriculture practices, cocoa value chain, financial situation and literacy
Qualitative research will be started in May 2022 through Focus Group Discussion (personas, experience journey mapping) with the farmers regarding market access, income, transactions, transparency, farm management and processing, learning, technology and livelihood.
AgUnity started by conducting meetings with country partners to establish process maps, key stakeholders, product users and other supply chain information. Site visits were undertaken to identify any context specific issues.
During development phase AgUnity set up a cloud-platform secured in Blockchain, loaded relevant updates to the AgUnity App and assigned a device to each actor in the supply chain. Training manuals for the products were developed and distributed during this phase.
Where required, assistance was provided to farmers and processors in the process of finding buyers, communicating supply chain and quality assurance improvements, which in turn returned higher prices for the commodity.
