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SIMPLY DOING THE BEST
Ramm millers is a maize milling company doing value addition of flour and animal feeds. Most small scale farmers in our region do maize farming which is their main cash crop and staple food. Most of these farmers are women who play the biggest role in the family as bread winners.
These women farmers face a lot of challenges to get market outlet for their products thus low living standards due to small income. We saw the need to create awareness and become a market link for their farm produce by starting a maize milling company and doing value addition. This has been immensely successful and it has effectively helped many women sell their products at market price. We have also empowered women with employment and training opportunities in digital entry of data on stock, production records, order and sales records and trainings on crop management and use of digital machines like moisture meters and digital weighing scales.
State your goals
- To establish a platform help train farmers online and market their products
- Introduce online payments and fund transfers and the use of simple(USSD)unstructured supplementary service data to cut costs
- Provide digital extension and advisory services
What problems (particularly in value chain competitiveness and global disruption) are your community’s stakeholders facing due to the Covid-19 pandemic?
1. Shortage of skilled labour due to stigma on Covid 19.This is due to the ongoing government ministry of health and WHO guidelines to maintain social distancing and wear masks
2. Broken supply chain due to economic problems caused by Covid 19 due to the last lockdowns and restriction of movements. This has affected many suppliers in our community. The GDP growth in Kenya is expected to contract significantly; the Central Bank of Kenya revised its estimate for 2020 from the initial 6.2% to 3.4%
3. Adopting and learning new technologies. Most women farmers in the community lack skills on how use digital machines. Due to covid 19 a lot of activities have gone digital, a new World Bank economic update says more needs to be done to prepare citizens and businesses for the economy, society and jobs of the future.
What minimum viable solution(s) are you proposing to address the challenge(s) in your community?
1.Ramm millers has sensitized their staff and community on safety measures concerning Covid 19 as per the Kenya ministry of health requirement and guidelines, on social distancing and proper use of masks. We started giving our staff rotation shifts of working days.
3. The government has opened lockdowns and most business has resumed their work while following government ministry of Health guidelines on Covid 19.This has eased the supply of rawmaterals.
2. We have currently planning to establish a digital online marketing and training platform in order to help our women farmers sell their maize and make orders for their animal feeds products
Share your story (your narrative)
Success is built on trust, and trust of the self and other” I was a former telecommunication employee but I was retrenched 13 years later. Life was not easy back in the community as a single mother with two kids and no side business. Being a woman and a bread winner was not easy I felt the hardest challenge many women go through in the community. Many women were exploited by middle men trading as brokers using manual weighing scales and yet these women were small holder farmers. Therefore I saw the need to empower these women by connecting smallholder women farmers to rewarding markets since most women in my community were farmers.
I did not have enough money to start the business but I had to fulfill my purpose and help these women out of farming hardship. I wanted to give them hope and make them know there is possibility of getting there maize weighed with right measures, grading and selling at competitive prices.
By faith, I started reading more about maize milling and even visited a plant at my region where I got a friend who took me around and at the end of the visit I had to come up with a plan on how to start.
With the gathered information, I started working towards starting simple as per my slogan (simply doing the best) .I enrolled for an online ‘She trade’ ‘ITC’ (International Trade Center) where gained a lot of business skills.
The drive behind the business opportunity was occasioned by the challenges women and smallholder farmers undergo in pursuit to better markets and in this sense rewarding markets. I seized the opportunity to provide rewarding markets through adding value to their produce to attract premium prices and also increase their income capacity by providing them with market outlet for their maize produce.
After establishing the milling plant I realized that the by-products from our milling spiked other agribusiness opportunities to these women like poultry keeping, pig keeping and dairy farming. Many women started keeping poultry due to availability of cheap and accessible animal feeds.
Our vision is to be the leading brand of choice in East Africa and beyond .Our Mission is to provide rewarding markets to small scale farmers while focusing on quality production of food and animal feeds. In addition towards achieving this mission we started collaborating with big grain organization like East Africa Grain Council and Cereal Growers Association, to train on modern farming, planting, post-harvest, storage, e-commerce marketing and networking.
Please provide any additional relevant information that you would like to share.
Our project has increased awareness and preference of fortified maize production, it has greatly helped many small scale farmers as an enterprise, value chain to access to market opportunities for maize, and acquire locally available raw materials at cost effective price. There is also an opportunity of advancing processing technology with huge economies of scale. We have a strong believe that we can change and improve the livelihood of msny people.
Your Final Proposal for challenge
yes
Can you expand on the digital component for this proposal?
Aim high and innovates new technologies where necessary in digital platform
Hi Rachel Miami, please note that you are required to upload an image of yourself so that we know who we are cocreating with.
Thanks for sharing the overview of your idea/mvp with us.
In addition to Moe Ba's feedback, here are some suggestions to help you further refine your idea:
1. In the introduction paragraph, you mentioned that your idea has already helped to reduce poverty,create employment opportunities to 30% women and youth. When filling in the final submission form, remember to specify the source of such claims. This ensures that your claims are credible and will increase your chances of winning.
Separately, you may want to indicate how your idea will specifically impact the lives of women- recall the context of this challenge. Right now, idea seems to target all genders from all age groups with no specific focus on women empowerment/development.
2. In your goal, you have indicated values, such as 100 women, 200 youth etc. What does this mean? It is unclear why your goal is specific to benefiting certain number of individuals. As mentioned above, indicate how exactly your goals will benefit or help women in the community.
3. Under the problems section, you have currently listed 2 issues. They are realistic and relevant to the problem. But details are not provided on how these issues affect the women in your community. Further elaborations backed with proofs and scientific evidence are required.
4. Regarding your proposals, you need to clearly indicate the reasons behind your proposals, how they will have an impact on the women, and how they address the gap between the challenges and opportunities around the context of this idea. Also, you need specify availability and accessibility of your proposals. At the moment, I get none of these from your given answers.
5. Currently, your story is merely a description of your business. That's not what we want. Download the storytelling factsheet for narrating a compelling story that will effectively engage with your target audience and get the relevant stakeholders to positively respond via a clear call-to-action. You can also watch the storytelling factsheet's walk-through videos here: https://cocreate.itu.int/hubbub/communitypage/82360
Users tagged:
Go ahead with your project!!! Congrats!!!
Congratulations RAMM millers for choosing to serve the community in a realistic and touchable way. We feel your presence.
Very Good wok Ramm millers. A positive inspiration for women in our community, country and globally.
Thank you for empowering women and farmers , you are a Nation's role model. Aim higher great potential in you
It should be good to see pictures or something can show us how is the technology you are supporting for. For me it is not very clear the technologic topic, how apply to your project?
Thanks for sharing Rachel,
Agriculture is and will be a growing industry. However as a competitive commodity distribution and logistics.
question. beyond awareness and preferences, what other advancements can you create top solve distribution and logistics so your awareness can be validated through commercialization?
Suggestion: How can Maize be diversified to empower other agricultural sectors that depend on your product. This could be an affiliate source of revenue since you can become price competitive with local entries.
African Company uses maize to create shoes. etc or other products. diversify
This category is about reeling out a digital solution that creates impact for women in your community. Think deeply your business, identify your key digital component and how it's helping women and girls in your community and redesign your pitch. You are on a path to greatness, don't lose sight of that. Keep pushing!
Good idea Rachel,Elaborate more on how you involve and help women in the community to use digital machines and explain which marketing strategy do you use to cap the market link between farmers
Nice idea RACHEL, But you need to include more information regarding your project. You should explain what is the digitals solution you are providing to the farmers in my region?
This is a good idea, though I would suggest we could add a mobile Application which helps on scheduling of workers plus reminding them of their duties, help out farmers track their produce, costs and profits. You could also think of having educational meetings with farmers on how they can increase their produce.
Hi Rachel,
In your goals you've listed "To provide food security to 40% counties in our country which matches the big four agenda of the president." - Are there any ways in which you could get in front of the right people that could help you accelerate the process? How would that look like? Have you considered the option?
I also feel your story should be more personal, explain more in depth what propelled you on this path.
I did not get any digital touch on your project. Do you have any plan to transform it with digitally.
Greetings
Congratulation on your ideas
keep it up by linking with more than 2000 farmers on maize supplies, dairy and poultry farmers as well as creating employment opportunities to 100 women and 200 youth in the region
I love this im also into agriculture
This is noble it will result in reducing watsgae also and poverty .
Im still failing to grasp the digital concept or backing on it .. unless i have skipped a part
Status label added: Mentor feedback received
Hello Racheal Miami
This is a good idea
Kindly highlight in terms of technology works in the assistance of the project.
Also would you consider the implementation of the supply chain technology that can be used to show the origin of the farmers work being done to appreciate them for their efforts .That can assist.
Good luck
Best Regards.
Hi Rachel,
I trust you are well.
Let me congratulate you on your business and the value you are adding to your community.
I wish to share a few questions and remarks for your consideration.
1. The category you have selected is the digital agricultural solution, kindly reflect on this in your post and more specifically the minimum viable solution section.
2. I love the way you’ve set out your goals however, it will be even better to set timelines to each goal thus making them SMART – visit https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/project-objectives/ for a detailed explanation.
3. Consider amending your problem section to reflect on how COVID-19 has further deepened the challenges faced by small scale farmers and/or the entire maize value chain. Moreover, giving facts/stats (with sources/citations) would give this section more credibility.
Status label added: Community feedback received
The idea has been progressed to the next milestone.
technology use is missing here, otherwise good project
Status label added: Expert feedback received
Hi RACHEL, brilliant idea. I can see that you are doing so many things. Are you able to share with me your business and revenue model? Then how best have you impacted women in the digital space? All the best with your idea
Status label added: Submission completed