The Farm was among 12 finalists from seven African countries selected from 245 applications to pitch their businesses directly to investors.The WLA programme, which is the maiden edition, is being jointly organised by the World Resources Institute (WRI), and Fledge, a global network of conscious company accelerators and investment funds, helping entrepreneurs to create impactful companies among other things.

The WLA seeks to drive investment towards restoring the world’s degraded and deforested lands. Mr Theodore Ocansey, the Founder and Managing Director Kete-Krachi Farms Limited, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, expressed the hope that he would get an investor to partner with the company to achieve its aim of creating jobs and contributing to the sustainable development goal of restoring degraded lands.

“Currently we export the cashew in its raw state and it does not pay much so we want to put up a large farm and process the nuts. This will help empower the youth and reduce rural-urban migration,” he noted.

Mr Ocansey said the initiative was the outcome of his academic research project he conducted at the University of Ghana some years back. “Our concept is solid and workable because we have run the pilot with the small resources we have. It is capital intensive because it involves installing drip irrigation and other sizable investments,” he said.

He explained that the project was based on a nucleus farm of 78,000 trees on 500 hector with drip irrigation support and an out-grower scheme with 400,000 to 1,000,000 trees. The Kete-Krachi Farms, Mr Ocansey said, had a strategy to be organic-certified and it aimed not to use chemical spraying at all on any part of the farm.

“The farm will start processing cashew nut for export in 2022 as well as cashew apple juice for local consumption and export. Bees will feature significantly of the farm also, so beehive products such as honey, propolis and wax will be available for sale too.”

The other finalists include sustainable value chain by Akili Development from Kenya, a fruit growing and marketing initiative by Aoulaye from Niger, Moringa oil extraction venture by Asili Oils from Rwanda, and high-quality organic livestock feed by Chabana Farms from Botswana.