The British Council has produced videos in Bangladesh, Ghana, India and Pakistan that show how social enterprises are transforming the lives of individuals and communities.
This video, and the interview here with co-founder of MoringaConnect, Kwami Williams, highlights this social enterprise which is reducing malnutrition and lifting poor farmers out of poverty in Ghana.
How did an aerospace engineer from MIT and a development economics major from Harvard end up launching a social enterprise to help farmers in Ghana?
From space to the soil and economic theory to building a food and beauty brand … it sounds funny, but that has been our journey.
Co-founder Emily Cunningham and I were both on a quest to figure out how our respective degrees could have a positive impact in the developing world. That search led us to enrol in a class at D-Lab, a program at MIT that applies a multidisciplinary approach to development, emphasising co-creating solutions with people in developing countries instead of for them.
As part of the class, we travelled to Ghana in January 2012 to work alongside farming families growing moringa. By the end of our trip it was clear that the solution to the poverty and malnutrition facing smallholder farmers lived in the moringa trees in their backyards. We’ve dedicated ourselves since to capturing the value in these trees.
Why did you focus on moringa as a route out of poverty?
Farmers in Ghana kept telling us, “moringa is a miracle tree.” We doubted it then but the more we researched the crop, the more we realised that they were right.
Moringa is a drought resistant tropical tree that is quick to grow, rich in nutrients and restores the soil. The seeds from moringa contain an anti-ageing, moisturising oil, comparable in feel to popular cosmetic oils like argan oil or jojoba oil, but with a longer shelf life, superior essential fatty acid composition, and greater ability to repair scars, wrinkles, and stretch marks.
The leaves from moringa, gram for gram, contain more vitamin A than carrots, more calcium than milk, more protein than eggs, and more iron than spinach. They are high in antioxidants to boost your immune system and have galactagogue properties which help nursing mothers increase milk supply.
So describing moringa as a miracle tree does it more justice than even “superfood.”
How did you convert this insight into a social enterprise?
As we learned more about the challenges moringa farmers face, it became clear that realising the potential of moringa would require building a vertically integrated chain that helps farmers grow moringa commercially, consume it communally, add value through processing locally, and connects the products we create from moringa to consumers looking to improve their personal care and health globally.
And so we launched MoringaConnect, which increases the income of farmers formerly earning less than $3 (£2.29) per day by a factor of 10 on average.
What products do you make? Where do you manufacture, market and sell them?
MoringaConnect is committed to adding value in Ghana rather than exporting raw material out of the country like most agribusinesses. We came up with a proprietary extraction process to allow us to pull this off and create jobs, now numbering 25 across our value chain.
We market our moringa oil under our True Moringa beauty brand and sell it online, in physical stores in Ghana and the US, and wholesale to brands formulating cosmetic products with moringa oil.
We market our moringa leaf powder under our Minga Foods brand and sell it in stores in Ghana and export wholesale to brands formulating food products with it. We have some exciting new products launching under both True Moringa and Minga Foods – follow us on social media to get the latest.
Could you scale this to other parts of Africa?
We are learning everyday what model will work best to take us from the 2,000 farmers we currently engage in Ghana to millions of farmers across Africa. Focus is the name of the game and we’re working hard to perfect our model of providing inputs, training, and a guaranteed market to farmers in Ghana.
In parallel, we are sharing lessons and forming partnerships with socially-conscious organisations looking to use moringa to positively transform lives in other parts of the world.
What has proven challenging in running a social enterprise?
We’ve faced challenges dealing with middlemen entering our supply chain, getting certification bodies in Ghana to be time-conscious in their approval of our products, but I think the biggest has been dealing with the reality that agriculture isn’t sexy when it comes to investment.
Thankfully, we have a solid group of investors that have recently joined our family to scale MoringaConnect but I hope that one day agriculture will be seen as just as viable as ventures in tech or extractive industries, which raise millions in funding without tangible products or paying customers.
What advice would you share with aspiring social entrepreneurs?
I would say, your idea is great but it is far more important to spend more time listening, conducting needs assessment, talking to your beneficiaries and customers, than creating beautiful business documents and spreadsheets Second, prove and iterate on each part of your model rigorously in a small, cost-effective way, before fully investing more time, money, and human capital.
I would add that every problem is an opportunity to create value for people, to innovate, to serve, to learn, to be challenged, and for business-savvy people, to make money.
Where do see yourself in 10 years?
Outside of growing MoringaConnect, I’d also like to implement a few other business ideas.
My prayer is that I will also be in the position to begin investing expertise and capital into other entrepreneurs focused on improving the quality of life for people in Africa.
In essence, I want my life to count towards making the continent of Africa better and so whatever that looks like 10 years from now, that’s what I’ll be doing.
Find out more and place orders at MoringaConnect, True Moringa and Minga Foods.
To help MoringaConnect and other social enterprises enhance their social impact, the British Council has brought together two organisations – Growth Mosaic in Ghana and Investing for Good in the UK – to co-develop an investment fund to provide finance to social enterprises in Ghana.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by the British Council, sponsor of the international social enterprise hub.
