After losing her father in his early life, Mechi Amaah had to look after pigs and sell them under her mother’s supervision to provide for their necessities. Upon getting to the university, she did business selling various things to make ends meet and decided to settle on manufacturing and selling hair products solely. 

How Mechi started with the cosmetic business idea

Mechi founded Black and Natural Cosmetics, a 100% organic cosmetic manufacturing company aimed to encourage the consumption of organic hair cosmetics, initially and subsequently, skin cosmetics. To join environmental protection and sustainable development, Black and Natural Cosmetics derives all its ingredients from plants, some of which are organically processed.

Mechi Amaah was about expanding his business when COVID-19 pandemic hit the world and everywhere was under lockdown. However, the seed capital she got from the foundation enabled her to diversify and employ 2 more workers, thereby saving her business from liquidation. Coupled with the training received on the programme on business management, she has been able to take her business to another level and created a high level of impact in her community.

“The training the program offered, helped me to keep tabs on my mission, vison and most importantly, my finances. Ever since the program, I can proudly say the books of my businesses are in order.”

Funding for Mechi’s cosmetic business idea

Since getting the grant, she has employed 4 more staff to help with her business and now has 7 employees working directly under her. Also, her annual revenue has increased by 70%, with her opening two other companies and awards to her name.

“To give back to my community, i have created jobs and am currently working on an accelerator program to train young girls with vocational training skills that can enable them gain employment or start up their own business. This will go a long way to reduce unemployment in my community and country.”

Being a graduate of accounting, she helps budding entrepreneurs set their accounts straight and helps them plan their business. Currently, she has built a community of about 30 entrepreneurs. These will go a long way to reducing unemployment in her community and country.

ABOUT THE TONY ELUMELU FOUNDATION


The Tony Elumelu Foundation is the leading philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, driving poverty eradication, catalysing job creation across all 54 African countries, and ensuring inclusive economic empowerment. Since the launch of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme in 2015, the Foundation has trained over 1.5 million young Africans on its digital hub, TEFconnect, and disbursed nearly USD$100 million in direct funding to 18,000 African women and men, who have collectively created over 400,000 direct and indirect jobs. The Foundation’s mission is rooted in Africapitalism, which positions the private sector, and most importantly entrepreneurs, as the catalyst for the social and economic development of the African continent.

The post Meet 2019 TEF Alumni, Mechi Amaah who is into production of organic and eco-friendly cosmetics appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

As a young man born and raised into a family of small-scale agricultural commodity producers, he had firsthand experience of the ordeals endured by low- and middle-income earners in Cameroon, all of whom struggle to access urban markets in the continent amidst the deplorable state of farm to market roads and fragile commodity supply chains especially in the agriculture sector.

But in 2017, three years after his degree in Journalism and Mass Communications and armed with substantial work experience in Communications, Social Enterprise and Project Management functions, Che Azenyui began asking himself deeper questions as to how he would leverage his academic training, professional background and deep passion for technology to proffer solutions to some of daily challenges threatening Africa’s long term food security.

In January 2018, it became clear to him that with digital innovations, he could use the growing influence of technology to boost local production and local consumption of agricultural products in Africa. His first step was to come up with a business plan to the best of his ability and then mobilize resources to bring the dream alive. It was then he encountered the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme in 2019, which led to the startup that is today known as Digifarms Africa.

Beyond the seed funding he received from the programme, the Startup Enterprise toolkit provided an ideal platform for learning growth and expansion for Digifarms Africa. Among other things, it taught Che Azenyui resilience, record keeping and financial reporting, enterprise communications and business forecasting. One of his biggest lessons is in the importance of long-term planning as an enterprise, even as Digifarms navigates through challenges and successes.

With a database of more than 500 local commodity producers in Cameroon across aspects like commodity value addition, farm optimization, packaging, branding and marketing, farmers sell their farm produce from the comfort of their farms. Some have witnessed a sharp decline in post-harvest crop loss just by connecting with buyers via Marketplace, Digifarms’ online sales platform.

Since the launch of Digifarms Africa, Chi’s pride in seeing Cameroonian commodity consumers consuming Cameroonian products has been unmatched. He has successfully pulled together commodity producers and Consumers in Cameroon into one big trading community referred to as the Digifarms Community. This has greatly cut down the comparative cost of product acquisition, reduced up to 70% of the amount of time spent on acquiring agricultural products and provided easier market access for small-scale farmers in Cameroon.

DigiFarms is now one of the major distributors of locally grown rice (Ndop Rice) in the South West Region of Cameroon – an achievement that has significantly downsized dependence on imported rice in the SW Region of Cameroon. His vision to make Digifarms Africa an agri-commodity one-stop-shop for every African citizen has found him in search of partnerships with manufacturers, angel investors, wholesalers and even traders all over the continent, just to ensure that food security, revenue generation and job creation remains evergreen and ever fresh.

The post Agri-Startup Digifarms Africa Tackles Food Security in Cameroon appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.