Ten dynamic and innovative agribusiness start-ups have been nominated to partake in the Agritech Investment Readiness Accelerator Programme following a four-phase rigorous and competitive selection process.

The selected companies are start-ups currently leveraging the use of technology to augment their business operations and models to help address everyday problems in Agriculture, including Manufacturing, Crop Farming, Farm Machinery, Food Production, Pesticides, Mapping, Marketing and Public Relations.

Selected start-ups include AB Precision Solutions, which provides precision agricultural solutions to farmers as a service, including the deployment of drones, to improve yields and reduce post-harvest losses; AF Map Works uses GIS software such as ArcGIS, ERDAS, and Global Mapper for data analysis mainly rainfall or temperatures for a designated location to build up geographic maps indicating the changes in vegetation and weather condition in a certain period of time; Agro Innova conducts research to identify challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Ghana and develops farmer-centred innovation solutions which can easily be adopted by these farmers and AIScarecrow helps cereal farmers to successfully ward off pest birds, cutting their losses to these birds by 90-95 per cent and saving 8-10 hours of their time.

Others are: Agro Kings, which focuses on agro-processing, farming, and agri-tech, with the vision to feed the future, empower smallholder farmers and innovate using technology, they produce Ghana's premium rice brand, Nana's Rice; Commodity Network utilizes proprietary software app, to collect, maintain, and analyze smallholder farmers online and offline profiles, generating data to support innovative farm solution distribution, whilst enabling rural smallholder farmers' convenient and cost-effective access to modern farm inputs and farm management technologies, as well as market and Eazz Foods which dries eggs to make it easier to use, easier to transport and best for industrial purpose.

The rest are: Grow for Me, a web and mobile based Agricultural crowdfunding and crowd farming platform, that sponsors farmers in growing more crops to solve hunger problems in Africa; SAYeTECH, a combines the advantages of IoT and Artificial Intelligence with robust hardware, ideally suited for smallholder farms in Africa which design, manufacture, provide maintenance and training, and empower farmers with data that help increase their efficiency and WamiAgro which offers input supply in the form of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Also, in collaboration with our partners, they offer smallholder farmers mechanization services on credit, it said in a statement issued and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra.

It is being hosted by Innohub in partnership with Tech Entrepreneurship Initiative, 'Make-IT in Africa', and is being implemented by Deutsche für Gesellschaft Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Wangara Green Ventures, ABSA Bank Plc and Accra Angels Network.

The statement said even though many start-ups showed signs of strong growth potential they require external funding to witness future growth, adding that great fraction of these start-ups were unable to raise money from investors because they were not investor ready and lacked the capacity to appeal to investors.

It said the Agritech investment initiative would therefore take selected Agribusinesses through a structured 8-week Accelerator programme and work closely with experienced technical Business Coaches to help them to be investor ready.

"The accelerator will help assess the maturity level of start-ups, as well as evaluate and increase their investment attractiveness. Each start-up will also be supported logistically with a laptop as well as licence to a globally used platform that supports them to build their investment case.

"The programme will use the blended learning approach with a focus on providing participating agribusinesses with the support to meet three clear fundamentals; Strategize to assess their investment readiness and define their investment ask; Target the kind of capital and investors suited to each unique venture; and cultivating investor relationships and agreeing on deal terms that matter," the statement added.