BizTech: This Ghanaian startup has built an app that enables people farm online

There is a growing movement within the country that is making agriculture a gateway to economic growth.

These entrepreneurs are doing so with an app called complete farmer which allows diasporans to farm remotely on the internet.

A demand-driven digital agriculture platform that uses data and tech to produce high-quality agriculture products at scale.

Just months before mechanical engineering student Desmond Koney was due to graduate from college, his father died suddenly, leaving Desmond a struggling pineapple farm on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana’s capital.

Until that pivotal moment in December 2012, agriculture had not featured in the younger Koney’s plans. But after his university lecturer pointed out that this could be his “call to manhood,” he decided to honour his father’s legacy by turning the farm’s fortunes around and using the profits to support his mother and siblings.

Things didn’t turn out to be nearly so simple, but today Mr Koney is poised to revolutionize the way people farm, not just in Ghana but across Africa.

His company, Complete Farmer, which was born out of his desire to “run farms like factories,” combines what Koney describes as an “Airbnb land model” with a “crowd farming” approach to capital investment to deliver made-to-order produce to clients around the world.

Engineer Koney sat with GhanaWeb Business and chronicled how he became fixated on figuring out how to run African farms like factories.