Mastercard Foundation celebrates female entrepreneur
Mastercard Foundation, an international non-governmental organisation, has celebrated a woman who overcame the challenges of her rural background to set up an agric-based startup that now employs a chain of hands.
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Hikimatu Kadiri, who is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of AgroMart, rose from rural settings to become an employer entrepreneur. It was a feat achieved through a collaboration with some local companies to empower the rural-based agriculture-related start-up in the northern areas of the country.
The partnerships came in the form of business opportunities which generated capital for Ms Kadiri to set up her own farm service outlet. The partnering companies are DEGAS and IDH, who both invest in individuals and companies.
IDH is a social enterprise that works with businesses, financiers, governments and civil society to realise sustainable development, while Degas is an agri-fintech startup that invests in people.
The Mastercard Foundation works with visionary organisations to enable young people in Africa and in Indigenous communities in Canada to access dignified and fulfilling work.
Breakthrough
Ms Kadiri said she had her breakthrough when she won a contract to supply 200 bags of fertiliser and 200 bags of millet seeds, all worth $23,000.
“In 2020 to 2023 cropping years, I was awarded a contract to provide mechanisation service and also supply input worth $47,000,” Ms Kadiri, who has since acquired a tractor for farming services, said.
“Here's how I got this tractor. I made part payment, and through this contract I was able to complete the payments,” she added. Telling her life story, Ms Kadiri said she got interested in farming after completing senior high school, and managed to secure five acres of land for her farming adventure.
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“What I have benefited from the Mastercard Foundation programme is that in 2022, I was awarded a contract to supply 200 bags of NPK (fertiliser), and then 200 bags of millet seeds which was a total of $23,000,” she said.
She said she later got a separate contract “to provide mechanisation service and also supply input” for a total of $47,000. “Some of the achievements I have made from the contract is giving out the opportunity for young people like myself and also to other tractor operators,” she said.
Ms Kadiri, who operates a tractor she acquired, said she trained other young women on how to operate the farm machine too give them employable skills. Currently, AgroMart has four permanent workers and employs further temporary workers during the peak of the farming season.
Her staff and close associates spoke of the impact that Mastercard Foundation had made on her life through DEGAS and IDH.
The Country Manager of IDH, Robert Asugre, said “through the support and investment, we are able to support them to grew about 35,000 metric tonnes of grains, which is valued at about $18.5 million.
If we put the numbers together, we are looking at $22 million private sector investment that we have facilitated into their supply chains,” he said of the investment into the operations of AgriMart.”