Young Maphanga changes the farming landscape
LINAH Maphanga, 28, a young entrepreneur from Pretoria, is helping to pave the way for smallholding farmers to get their produce to big markets amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Maphanga, pictured, has approached different non-government organisations to use these farmers as their suppliers for food parcels.
Maphanga said: “We have helped small farmers through the call from the government, given out by the Department of Small Businesses Development by getting in touch with NGOs and government agencies who are buying food parcels for the poor and vulnerable to buy from these smallholder farmers.”
Maphanga, who is the chief executive of the Farmers Assistant, works with farmers around Gauteng, who are now supplying townships from Pretoria to Johannesburg.
She started her business through connecting farmers with local restaurants to be their suppliers, but with the lockdown regulations, all those smallholding farmers lost their markets.
To ease the burden, she partnered with Grobank to assist farmers with personal protective equipment in Gauteng to continue to work during the pandemic.
“Since our farmers farm on a small scale they can’t supply to big chains such as Pick n Pay and Shoprite Checkers so most of their customers were informal traders.
“With the lockdown this was a problem as it meant that they had stock sitting because the market was closed leading to the perishing of stock. That’s when we realised we had to connect our clients with the market, to keep stock moving,” Maphanga said.
Farmers Assistant has 9 700 farmers from across South Africa, Botswana and Namibia.
“For our clients to connect to the market we have introduced a new service where people can place orders via WhatsApp and we deliver those goods from the farmer to the customers at a small commission,” she said.
Maphanga’s love for farming started from a young age on her parents’ farm in a small village next to Hazyview in Mpumalanga, however the business idea started after she had to assist her mother with the day to day running of the farm.
Farmers Assistant is a technology company that aims to connect smallholding farmers with the entire agricultural value chain, from connecting them with landowners, equipment, investors and funding institutions.
The company was established in 2018, and has over 4 500 users, with an audience of over 300 000 small-scale farmers from South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali and Nigeria.