And the winner is…

October 1, 2022

Par Daisy Leigh, Country Expansion Manager

Once the field research was concluded in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, responses were collated in Excel format from which we created monitoring dashboards for individual country results. In each country the 20 villages were ranked from 1st to 20th based on a weighted scoring system using the following criteria: 

1. Location 📍
2. Mobile Money 📲💸
3. Financial Organisation 🏦💰
4. Ag. Characteristics 🌱📐
5. Government Support
6. Next Crop Split 🌽🍅🌾🍆🥜
7. Water Access 🚰🚱
8. Farmer Harvest Satisfaction 😃😊😐😞😩

Each criteria’s score was composed of a number of responses to any given theme, for example the score for Next Crop Split gave a score for crops which are of interest to myAgro; if a farmer replied that he would plant Cocoa saplings, or Cocoyams, this wasn’t scored in the same way as a farmer who stated he would plant cereal crops such as rice and corn, or vegetable crops such as okra or tomatoes. Equally if a village all stated they wouldn’t plant again until the next season they scored more lowly as this showed they didn’t have 2 seasons in their village (and thus provided less potential for myAgro). 

Some scores, such as easy access to water for agricultural purposes, informed our evaluation of whether a village may be interested in market garden vegetable crops such as tomatoes, chilli, gombo etc as an ‘off season’ crop. For some of these elements it could be that the LOWER the results, the HIGHER the score. This was the case for Farmer Harvest Satisfaction, where the lower the level of satisfaction, the higher the market opportunity for myAgro. 

Once each individual dashboard was complete, and graphs generated, we made a comparative analysis with clear charts & dashboard. From this analysis it became clear that Côte d’Ivoire scored highest in 5 of the 8 categories, namely : 

• Mobile Money 📲💸
  • Côte d’Ivoire has the highest mobile money penetration in West-Africa with 3 majors telecommunication operations with a strong distribution network in rural areas. 82% of farmers surveyed used Mobile Money services, with 79% of farmers having Mobile Money services within 1km of the village.

• Financial Organisation 🏦💰
  • Côte d’Ivoire had the highest financial organisation score which was derived from the following criteria: a low number of farmers with a bank account (8%), a strong culture of savings through VSLA groups (30%), a tendency of farmers to organize into agricultural associations (36%) and cooperatives (46%).

• Ag. Characteristics 🌱📐
  • In the surveyed villages Côte d’Ivoire the average land size was 3.0 ha (with women having an average of 1.9 ha). Côte d’Ivoire’s overall agricultural characteristics score was also boosted by its low fertiliser usage rates, showing a potential for myAgro’s products. Neighbouring Ghana haed higher fertiliser usage rates due to government fertiliser subsidies .

• Next Crop Split 🌽🍅🌾🍆🥜
  • Côte d’Ivoire was ranked 1^st (46.8) by a large margin of 34% due to its alignment with myAgro’s current cereal crops (maize 51% and rice 37%) and due to 92% of farmers planning to grow market garden vegetables during the small season (Okra, Tomatoes, Chili Peppers and Aubergines)

• Farmer Harvest Satisfaction 😁📈📉😩
  • Only 26% of interviewees in Côte d’Ivoire were satisfied with their yields as opposed to Ghana (64%) and Nigeria (72%), demonstrating a bigger opportunity for myAgro to market its packets with promise of improved yields. 

In Nigeria Mobile Money services weren’t available until 2021. Consequently MM usage is only 6% with Nigerians preferring merchant banking whereby they receive and send through a merchant using a POS machine. In 2021 the guidelines for MM were reviewed and MM services were restricted to a particular area and only given to national telecommunication providers. Both of these factor would significantly complicate the roll out of myAgro activities in Nigeria; it would require a mentality shift among farmers to pay their packets through a MM payment system and MM service penetration is much more limited throughout Nigeria.

Results showed that the financial habits of interviewees better aligned with myAgro’s business model in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (such as using modern technology as a way of managing personal finances and having a strong existing infrastructure for sending and receiving cash).

In NCE’s 4th blog article we’ll provide key profiles of newly recruited team members