A 34-year-old Ghanaian agripreneur with Digiext has emerged winner of the maiden edition of the AgroMinds Africa Challenge.

Isaac Osei walked away with $170,000 as his award from the competition.

Out of this, $120,000 will be in exchange for 20% of his company from Jerry Parkes of Injaro Agricultural Holdings and $50,000 also in exchange for 12% of his company from Francis Osei of IESO Agribusiness Consult.

Mr Isaac Osei is a 70% shareholder in Digiext, an agribusiness that converts rice straw into paper products. In 2020, the company generated over $700,000 in revenue and a net profit margin of 31%.

The plant currently processes two tonnes per day and seeks an investment to be able to increase the capacity to 100 tonnes per day.

The funds received from the AgroMinds Africa Challenge shall be used to upgrade the company's processing plant from a smaller scale to larger scale processing plant.

The AgroMinds Africa Challenge is a financial empowerment platform that supports youth-driven and youth-led agribusinesses across Africa with equity financing, technical and network support to grow and scale their agribusiness ventures of up to $150,000.

In the maiden edition of the Challenge, 30 finalists were shortlisted from 12 African countries and with combined revenues of $7.6m. The average revenue per finalists was $263,000 and been in operation for an average of 2 years.

Executive Director of AgroMinds Africa, Steven Odarteifio, reiterated his commitment to investing over
$50m into several smart and youth-led agribusinesses over the next 10 years.

He believes the move will help transform Africa into a dominant agribusiness centre on the global stage; leveraging strongly on its established agribusiness potential.

On his part, Mr. Jerry Parkes of Injaro Investments was impressed overall by the quality of presentation and
business models of the finalists.

He also indicated that his outfit's investment offers to the agripreneurs were based on the agribusiness having a clear solution for a problem, turning something that is of no value to something that is of value and agribusinesses that sought to find an ever-improving efficiency in doing that.

Also, 34-year-old, Collins Odhiambo from Kenya received an investment package of $20,000 for 20% of his business from Francis Osei as well as a $55,000 loan facility from ABC Fund from Jerry Parkes of Injaro Investments.

His business is in involved in buy-back contract farming with smallholder farmers with specific value chain interventions that include poultry, horticulture, and input outlets.

The company is expected to upscale the hatchery to a capacity of current 9,000 chicken per month to 60,000 chicken per month.

Import three incubators each at 20,000 capacity to be able to hatch instead of a month 20,000 per week; buy a backup generator and do upscale of parent stock that can lay eggs to fill up all these incubators.

A 42-year-old Kedonojo Momoh from Nigeria into rice production and aggregation took home an investment offer of $30,000 for 20% from investors.