Located in the rural Northern Region of Ghana, Mayiya Investment Company Limited produces maize, rice, soya bean, sesame seeds and grains on both its own farmland and through its outgrower scheme. Mayiya has 1,000 acres of its own farm under cultivation for seed and grain, and works with 987 outgrower smallholder farmers on seed and grain production, who are farming on a total of 1,150 acres. Under the outgrower scheme, the farmers are supplied with inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and agrochemicals, as well as farm support services to produce seeds and grains.
In 2020, Mayiya received pre-investment technical support through the Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) of the ABC Fund, managed by Agriterra and implemented by Advance Consulting. Due to increasing demand for its products, Mayiya has scaled up its operations and secured more sales contracts. The expansion that will be supported by the ABC Fund first was prefaced by support from the TA Facility to fortify Mayiya against anticipated stressors. The TA interventions focused on improving human resources management and financial management.
The improvements in human resource management began with the development of job descriptions for new positions. Mayiya needed to recruit an outgrower manager to realise the higher production volumes requested by its customers. The company also needed to recruit a trained accountant to improve financial management. With the help of the TA, an outgrower manager and accountant are now contracted.
The recruitment of the outgrower manager has been positive, according to Mr. Issahaku Zakaria, Managing Director of Mayiya: “With the support of TAF, Mayiya was able to increase productivity and competitiveness in the maize, rice and soybean value chains. We have increased the number of outgrowers that we are working with and are now able to better disseminate good agricultural farming practices to our smallholder farmers, thus increasing their productivity.”
Beyond increased farmer productivity, Mayiya has improved its internal operational processes. TAF made it possible for Mayiya to adopt an enterprise resource planning system. Previously, financial management and accounting was done by one employee who was responsible for all company operations on paper and in Excel, while simultaneously managing outgrowers. The risk of losing critical company data was extremely high as a significant component of the records were on paper, therefore no long-term strategic decisions could be made due to the lack of reliable company data. “With the automation of data, company processes are now much more efficient; reports are timely and can be used to map out company patterns and make predictions. The few paper contracts being done are scanned and uploaded,” says Mr. Zakaria.
The remaining task for Mayiya now is to ensure that the farmer transformation journey continues and that company growth is sustainable in the long term.
