Start-up leads way for farmers in developing nations
WHILE the Gold Coast is a long way from being the next Silicon Valley, there are a number of exciting start-up innovative tech companies who are leading the way.
A small social enterprise company based in Surfers Paradise is winning international accolades for its innovation in changing farming practices in developing countries.
Social enterprise AgUnity has developed a platform which helps poor farmers improve their agricultural practices in order to become profitable.
By using blockchain in the back end of their platform, AgUnity are able to guarantee security for farmers, many of them illiterate, and in doing so tackle the issues of graft and corruption which plague farming in those countries.
AgUnity Chief Operating Officer Angus Keck said to successfully implement the platform, they had to develop an app which was both intuitive and visually literate for people who had never used a smartphone before.
“We first deployed the app with wheat farmers in Kenya,” he said. “We learnt a lot from that experience as our team hadn’t had experience working with smallholder farmers in developing countries.
“It’s a steep learning curve when the user has never seen a smart phone before and hasn’t had a primary school education.
“You have to understand their language and much of the app revolves around a limited use of words with a lot of icons, geometric shapes and primary colours – it’s a very simple user interface.”
One of the early groups AgUnity worked with were smallholder female coffee farmers in Ethiopia, who dubbed the smart phone and its interactive app “touchy”.
The phones are sourced from China at a fraction of their retail value and supplied to the farmers through NGO programs in partnership with AgUnity.
AgUnity’s Gold Coast office is the brains trust of their development team, with further staff based in Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and Singapore. CEO David Davies began the business in Singapore, but moved the base to the Gold Coast because “it’s an idyllic location and a great place to raise your kids“.
The innovative IT company is also keen to support women in what is a typically male dominated industry. With the help of Study Gold Coast they have hired their first female software engineer, Vicki Suzuki, an IT graduate from Southern Cross University.
The start-up is about to embark on a new round of equity crowd-funding. For more details: equitise.com/agunity