Moses Yangnemenga has been farming since childhood. Growing up in the rural agricultural town of Nandom, he helped his parents cultivate groundnuts, beans, maize, millet and sorghum. In 2014, he was accepted into Ashesi’s Business Administration programme as a Mastercard Foundation Scholar. And during his third year on campus, he started Tieme Ndo – “push me up” in his native language – a business to support the farmers back in his hometown increase their yields. The business got a $20,000 jumpstart from the D-Prize, a programme that supports entrepreneurs working on poverty interventions.
Working with four communities, Moses and his team provide improved seeds, pesticides and fertilizers to farmers on credit. He has also engaged experienced Agricultural Extension Officers to guide farmers in applying modern, scientific methods in managing their farms. Farmers receive advice, for example, on how to deal effectively with pests like the armyworm, which posed a great challenge during the 2017 and 2018 planting seasons. By providing access to resources, Moses’ business enables farmers to increase their produce in ways they could not before. And it has continued to grow in reach and impact. Currently, there are over one hundred farmers in four communities within Nandom enrolled on Tieme Ndo.
“By the beginning of the new year, the harvest for the previous planting season would have usually finished,” says Mr Sylvester Geyire, a beneficiary from the Goziiri Dorupuo community. “This year has been different. Because of our work with Moses, the harvest was so good that I still have more to keep selling.”
Donatus Kpiblu, another Tieme Ndo beneficiary who has been farming for 13 years, says he harvested three bags on his one-acre millet farm in the 2016 planting year. in 2017, he harvested eight bags on the same plot through support from Tieme Ndo.
In April 2018, just before he graduated, Moses got a further $3,000 in funding from the Fund for Service to Children and Youth at Ashesi to extend the programme to younger farmers. By so doing, Moses hopes to make farming more attractive for the younger people in his community who tend to avoid working in farming.
“Moses is an impressive young man,” observes Gregory Lanuzie, a 67-year-old man who worked as an Agricultural Extension Officer for 32 years. His son, Severo, is one of the younger people involved in Tieme Ndo. “You don’t see this kind of thing happen often; that a young man will return to his community to start an initiative to help his people.”
That is what inspired him to come out of retirement to help Moses with Tieme Ndo.
