How Kamal Yakub is opening up mechanized farming to smallholder farmers in Ghana with TROTRO Tractor

<p>Meet <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamal-yakub-3623b88" target="_blank">Kamal Yakub</a>, co-founder of <a href="https://www.trotrotractor.com/" target="_blank">TROTRO Tractor,</a> sometimes called the 'Uber for tractors' in Africa. </p> <p>TROTRO Tractor is an agricultural technology company that makes it possible for smallholder farmers to access agricultural machinery services ranging from tractors to combined harvesters, planters etc. as well as post harvest machinery, like shellers and treshers. </p> <p><b>Why that is a huge deal?</b></p> <p>According to Kamal, the average smallholder farmer in Ghana has about three acres of land and thus far getting access to agricultural machinery for land preparation and other services has been difficult to impossible for smallholder farmers in Ghana, which make up the majority of farmers in the country. </p> <p>Through TROTRO Tractor, the very smallholder farmers, that were mostly left out from mechanized farming now have the option to order mechanized farm services via USSD short codes from their phones, a service that has meet a real need. At the time of the interview in August 2019 TROTRO Tractor already had about 21.000 farmers signed up on their platform.</p> <p>But not just that, digitizing the payment processes with mobile money and upgrading the tractors and the agricultural machinery with IoT capabilities, such as geo fencing, gathering data on the agricultural machinery as well as the payment history for the services supplied, becomes possible, allowing the tractor owners to access financial services such as loans and insurances with more ease, according to Kamal.</p> <p>In the interview we speak about:</p> <p>★ How Kamal and his team came up with the idea</p> <p>★ How they tested their idea with no money down </p> <p>★ What the bottlenecks are, how the right partnerships could make a huge impact for the advancement of mechanized farming in Ghana</p> <p>★ What his advice is for young entrepreneurs on the continent </p> <p>and so much mo