Challenge: Most of Africa has chaotic agricultural value chains riddled with multiple brokers. the impact being the farmers gets shortchanged in order to feed all the players in the chain. There can be up to 7 brokers. Cost of goods is also high and quality poor because of all the multiple hand-offs. It is estimated that Africa experiences a 50% post harvest wastage equivalent of USD 30 B annually attributed to these challenges. Solution: Taimba sources directly from farmers and deliver direct to retailer premises at no cost.The price of the produce is also lower given we have significantly reduced the number of hand-offs at the same time we are able to pay farmers 20% better than what they are able to get presently. Effectively we are creating a parallel market for farmers rivaling the open air markets that are the havens for the current multiple broker system. what we are providing the farmer is another more professional better organised option on where to sell their produce that was not there before. Taimba is able to move affordable produce across regions at low cost and without ulterior motives of exploiting those that do not have easy access to fresh produce. Even with all these benefits to farmers and retailers, Taimba is able to make margins of 20% to 50% making it a profitable business given the right scaling capacity. Taimba also offers retailers a 12 to 24 hour credit as some of them are based in low income areas and are informal green grocers. What is unique about us is our partnerships with organisations that are specialists in their fields. For example Taimba work with Non governmental organisations that help farmers group into cooperatives then train farmers on good farming practices ensuring the quality Taimba requires. Taimba then contracts the farmer cooperatives and is able to get good quality products from them.
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