USAID-MFA supports young female aggregator with working capital, motorized tricycle to expand business

A young agripreneur in northern Ghana, Benfi Sallah Adams, has revolutionize her aggregation business with newfound resources, increasing grain mobilization from 30 to 600 bags monthly.

For five years, 29-year-old crop aggregator at Kusali in the Sissala West District of Ghana’s Upper West Region, used a donkey-drawn cart to transport maize and soybean from smallholder farmers to sell at the wholesale market in Gwollu, the district capital.

A high school graduate and single mother, Adams became an aggregator in 2018 to provide for her family and save for her daughter’s education. Before then, she worked as a farmhand alongside other women from her community, providing labor to commercial maize and soybean farms. During this time, Adams learned about value chain activities and developed an interest in crop aggregation.

She eventually acquired a donkey-drawn cargo cart and began to aggregate maize and soybean from smallholder farmers in her community. Initially, Adams had no choice but to sell her crops on a speculative market, selling to bigger buyers in Gwollu despite price and buyer uncertainty.

Occasionally, the young aggregator hired a motorized cargo tricycle to transport larger quantities of stock to market, more quickly than her donkey-drawn cart would allow.

Adams’s need for the motorized tricycle increased as her business expanded from 30 bags of aggregated soybean and maize per month in 2018 to 100 bags in 2022. To sustain this growth, Ms. Adams sought to acquire additional working capital to buy more produce, a motorized cargo tricycle of her own, and secure a reliable market to avoid glut.

In November 2023, Adams received support to expand her business from GAB Agric Limited, one of 13 Feed the Future Ghana Mobilizing Finance in Agriculture (MFA) COVID-19 Relief and Resilience Fund grantees. The support included a motorized cargo tricycle for each rural entrepreneur, like Adams, to transport produce to urban warehouses. The grantee also provided a working capital loan of $4,370 so that Adams could mobilize more grain from smallholder farmers in the area to supply GAB Agric’s customers.

At the peak of the harvesting season in December 2023, she was able to mobilize 400 bags of maize and 200 bags of soybean–six times her usual monthly total. This increased Adams’s pre-loan profit margin from $158.94 in November 2023 to $953.65 in December 2023, post-loan.

This is the largest quantity of grain I have ever mobilized in a month since I started my business in 2018. The cargo tricycle enables me to easily pick up produce at the farm gate, which has helped me expand my business and increase my income,” Adams explained.

Managing Director of GAB Agric, John Dimah, considers the support provided to the aggregator to be a success. “Ms. Adams is a trustworthy and committed agribusiness partner. She has managed the working capital loan well and we look forward to injecting more cash into her aggregation business in the coming season. When Adams expands her operations, GAB Agric gains access to a wider network of smallholder farmers who are better able to supply our customers,” he explained.