PIC CAPTION: Makany Touré, founder and CEO at Aftermarket pitched her startup at the AfricArena Abidjan Fintech, Energy, Mobility and Logistics Summit earlier this year in June in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and won the Best AfricArena Logistics Award. Image: Supplied / Hawkeye Group
Africa’s food produce landscape is changing with an even greater focus being put on sustainability in order to effectively address, manage and minimize food waste within the continent’s agricultural supply chain. It is estimated that globally, 14% of all food fit for human consumption is lost between harvesting and entry into the retail space. This creates room for innovative solutions to a challenging problem.
One innovative agritech startup called Aftermarket in Côte d’Ivoire is diligently solving this problem. AfricArena’s Jabulile Sonya Ngwenya caught up with Makany Touré, founder and CEO at Aftermarket to find out how her digital platform is helping farmers maximize opportunities to sell their produce and improve their bottom line by minimizing the effects of food waste.
“Aftermarket is a startup that is aimed at digitising food distribution processes in Côte d’Ivoire,” Touré tells AfricArena.
Ecstatic about winning the Best AfricArena Logistics Startup Award at the AfricArena Abidjan Fintech, Energy, Mobility and Logistics Summit earlier this year, Touré says “after I noticed the lack of organisation and infrastructure post harvest to allow fresh produce to reach the market, which was detrimental to the farmer and to the consumer as well, I was inspired to start Aftermarket.”
Touré shares that she launched Aftermarket with $30,000 in initial startup capital, which was used to “start and structure the company, build the Aftermarket online marketplace, buy packaging and hire staff.” She shares the moment when she knew there was a need for Aftermarket’s services. “When I saw the price of tomatoes quadruple, this price increase happened when I knew a lady in a small field in a village who sold tomatoes at the regular price had her tomatoes rotting.” This moment, she shares, confirmed that smallholder farmers needed her startup’s service to prevent post harvest food wastage and loss before their produce reached the market, and to ensure that they receive a fair price for their produce.
“I am passionate about what I do because of the satisfaction I get from fulfilling people’s needs, helping them find products they had been looking for,” says Touré.
Touré, who starts her day before sunrise shares that she is hoping to raise $150,000 in funds. “These funds will be used to buy a warehouse, a cold room, a delivery vehicle and hire staff.”
On a daily basis, Touré arises early to provide her team with instructions on collecting orders from farmers, fields meetings, and meet her team at their warehouse to oversee the sorting process and service delivery. She usually ends her day in the early evenings unless they are operating in a busy period.
Reflecting on the challenges she and her team have faced in a challenging business landscape, Touré says, “Our biggest challenge is really to find qualified staff and with providers. It is difficult finding consistent providers with quality produce. The sourcing is very difficult, but we work around it by having plans B to Z so we can always fall back on our feet.”
The funding winter, she adds, was challenging, but together, she and her team overcame these challenges. “We adjusted our services to what we could provide until we were able to get that push to do more.”
The best advice a mentor gave her, she tells AfricArena is that “no one can deliver your product like you can. Focus on your growth and forget the competition.” She says it is important for founders looking to break into agritech to “find a thing that passionates you about agriculture because that is what keeps you going.”
Looking to the future, she says she and her team are looking at “Exporting Aftermarket outside of Côte d’Ivoire to neighbouring countries.” This is an exciting move as West Africa’s challenging, fragmented logistics landscape provides ample opportunities to innovative agritech, logistics and mobility startups to provide top tier tech solutions to mitigate food waste and loss.
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