The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of RiceAfrika, Mr. Ibrahim Maigari, has disclosed that ‘Building an Africa that feeds itself’ is what RiceAfrika says it’s out to accomplish.
He indicated the for Africa to be food secured, the continent must invest more into agriculture mechanization.
“I was dumbfounded that as much as we have drones spraying chemicals over farms and we have applications linking farmers with fertilizers, we still allowed the farmers at the end of the day, to bend down or use manual labor to harvest,” he disclosed.
A news report on AFN, said, “What started as a platform to facilitate engagement (RiceAfrika) between farmers and input providers, quickly spun into one that would avail clustered Nigerian rice farmers with mechanization services.
According to RiceAfrika, the huge challenge it is trying to solve is often not given the necessary consideration.
“Farmers will most of the time have access to extension services such as agronomy advice, access to affordable and quality inputs and markets -which are much needed. But at the end of the day, how can African smallholder farmers harvest in an efficient way? In a way that does not waste valuable man hours and leave gaps for massive wastage due to manual harvesting?” the news report stated.
Presenting a brief background on RiceAfrika, the CEO, said, “We decided to create RiceAfrika as a platform in early 2020 and at that time Covid-19 had disrupted everything.
“The objective back then was basically to create a platform that will facilitate interaction amongst stakeholders in the value chain that could link farmers and input sellers and additionally source potential buyers.”
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