WEBINAR SPEAKERS
Bevon Charles
Managing Director,
Akata Farms
Bevon Chadel Charles is an Agriculture enthusiast, farmer, youth advocate and Entrepreneur from Grenada. She founded Akata Farms, a sustainable integrated farm that aims to build sustainable climate smart farms in Grenada and across the Caribbean to increase the regions capacity for export, value added products to strengthen AgriTourism enterprises and youth involvement in the Agriculture Industry.
She is Grenada’s first Country Representative of YOUNG PROFESSIONAL FOR AGRICULTURE DEVELOPMENT. An organization lead by young advocates for agriculture advancement and change. A One Young World Ambassador, president of the Grenadian Youth for Agriculture development in technology, as well as the Regional Coordinator for Sustainable Development Goals Corp, another youth driven organization with teams across the globe.
Her interests not only lie in developing a robust entrepreneurial sphere in Grenada and the Caribbean, she is deeply passionate about ICT, innovations in hydroponics, freight farming, AI Technology, Protein engineering and Nanotechnology as it regards to improving agricultural production and food security and how these innovations can transform growing rural communities that will, in turn, enhance the livelihoods of its people.
Her aptitude for personal development enabled her to be one of 14 Caribbean Entrepreneurs to be chosen for the Caribbean Youth Entrepreneur Programme. Bevon was awarded Winner of the Caribbean Region:
Commonwealth Youth Award 2021.
Bevon also is an avid reader, fictional writer, and gamer. She wants to develop E-sports in the Caribbean.
Jehiel Oliver
Founder & CEO,
Hello Tractor
Jehiel Oliver is the founder and CEO of Hello Tractor, an agricultural technology company that connects tractor owners with smallholder farmers in need of tractor services. At Hello Tractor, Jehiel is responsible for overall management and strategy. He has been honored with numerous awards for his work in social entrepreneurship including being recognized by Foreign Policy Magazine as a Top 100 Global Thinker and a World Economic Forum Circulars inaugural cohort member. He was appointed under the Obama Administration to serve two years as a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa, where he most recently chaired the technology subcommittee. Prior to Hello Tractor, Jehiel worked in consulting and investment banking. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Nairobi, Kenya.
Company Profile:
Rapid urbanization, aging farmer populations, and the drudgerous nature of farm work, have depleted rural labor supply and left viable farmland idle. Mechanization helps farmers plant 40x faster at 1/3 of the cost, yet tractors often sit idle because there’s no market to serve smallholders. Hello Tractor works like Uber to get tractor services to smallholder farmers. Their inexpensive tracking device and software allow farmers and tractor owners to book connected tractors from their phones. Farmers get a critical service formerly unavailable to them, banks see an asset recovery solution, dealers and fleet owners see a fleet optimization opportunity, and government see a low-cost way to manage large-scale mechanization schemes. Currently serving over 500,000 small farmers across Africa with over 3,000 tractor and combine owners, Hello Tractor’s technology is successfully unlocking investment to create and drive the tractor market for smallholder farmers.
Esther Ama Asante
Founder, Owner & CEO, Virtual Linguistic Solutions (VLS) and Organic Trade & Investments (OTI)
Esthy Asante – Esther Ama Asante, commonly known as Esthy, is an award-winning entrepreneur and the Founder, Owner, and CEO of two successful online businesses: Virtual Linguistic Solutions (VLS) and Organic Trade & Investments (OTI). Esther was born in Ghana and raised in France. She has worked with various multinational companies in Ghana and has championed managerial roles in radically different industries – from real estate to aviation industries. She was formerly the Relocation Manager at Executive Relocations Africa, a subsidiary of AGS Movers, and the Quality Manager, Personal Assistant, and Commercial Manager at Swissport Ghana Limited from 2015 to 2018. She masterminded the digitalization of the operations management system of OTI, which currently integrates 12,000 farmers and 300 small-scale manufacturers across Africa. This powerhouse entrepreneur has been honoured with a number of recognitions. In 2018, she received the Best Female e-Commerce Entrepreneur award. In March 2020, she was the only Ghanaian to be conferred the African Global Trade and Investment in Excellence (AGTIE) Award for Trade & Investment Facilitation Excellence. She has been featured in many publications including the American Biz.net, BusinessGhana News, the African Business Communities, and recently, the ecomConnect online magazine, thanks to her impressive achievements and her company’s performance in increasing sales during the COVID-19 crisis by 1,900%(!). Esther is also a member, a coach, and an Independent Consultant for the SheTrades Commonwealth Ghana project. She developed a concept note for the International Trade Center (ITC), which aims at finding solutions to the many challenges faced by women-owned businesses in Ghana. Over 30 WoBs (members of the SheTrades Commonwealth Ghana project) benefited from the program.
Nana Opoku Ware Ofori Agyeman-Prempeh
CEO,
Grow For Me Africa (GFMA)
Nana Opoku Agyeman-Prempeh – Nana Opoku Ware Ofori Agyeman-Prempeh is a high-growth serial entrepreneur with an academic background in Technology and Entrepreneurship from Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and an MPhil in Agricultural Engineering (Machine Systems) from the University of Ghana, Legon. He has led teams in building several apps including Asoriba, a Church CRM and donation platform; MybusinessPay a Fintech that processes millions of payments across the world into Ghana for local businesses; and Fusion Point, a Technology Consulting Company. Currently, he is focused on leading a team to build Grow For Me Africa (GFMA). GFMA is an agric tech company providing organizations and individuals a means to start, grow and monitor farms in Ghana from a web portal. GFMA aims to contribute to food production in Africa by helping feed 2.2 billion young Africans by 2050. The ultimate goal is to keep people out of poverty by bringing back young Africans into the ageing Agricultural industry.