27 TROTRO TRACTOR AND GHALANI WIN INAUGURAL AGRITECH CHALLENGE In September 2016, Kosmos announced the winners of the Kosmos Innovation Center AgriTech Challenge, the formal competition that invited young entrepreneurs to use innovation to develop commercial solutions to challenges within agriculture. After nurturing their ideas through research and collaboration, and pitching them to a panel of expert judges, winners of the competition received US$50,000 in seed funding. In addition, they received one year of technical assistance and mentorship from the KIC and MEST to help turn their ideas into viable businesses. TroTro Tractor Limited is developing a platform that uses mobile phones and GPS units to connect farmers to tractor operators within their vicinity, enabling them to request, schedule, and pre-pay for tractor services. The platform gives farmers greater access to mechanized farming equipment. Ghalani is creating farm management software that helps agricultural aggregators, who often have to manage relationships with thousands of small-holder farmers, to efficiently organize, manage, and monitor these farmers to improve productivity and reduce risk. TroTro Tractor and Ghalani were selected from an original field of more than 100 young entrepreneurs from all over Ghana who entered the competition, which began in April 2016 with the inaugural AgriTech Exchange, an interactive and informative brainstorming session in which experts in agriculture, business, and technology gathered to define the most pressing challenges facing Ghana’s agricultural sector. In a highly competitive selection process that followed the event, the young entrepreneurs pitched preliminary ideas to a panel of judges drawn from the Ministry “The agricultural sector was not foreign to us but the Kosmos Innovation Center AgriTech Challenge made us take a second look at what we knew. We were overwhelmed by the opportunities in the agriculture value chain. Now we have created a business solution to improve productivity in the sector. We look forward to building a solid business even before we step out of incubation.” GHALANI TEAM Kamal Deen of TroTro Tractor learns about growing corn from a local farmer during a KIC market research trip.