Paynesville – An
Report by Willie N. Tokpah, [email protected]
David Manly, founder of the firm, says the country can be self-sufficient if many people develop the idea of becoming an agricultural entrepreneur by inventing ideas that will ensure Liberia feeds itself.
“We lack merchandise farming, we don’t have the opportunity, so soil proteins are imported for agriculture activities,” Manly said.
“I am not a scientist or farmer, but just a software engineer, I can come to Liberia and built a successful agriculture business. I think anybody can build a successful business.”
Speaking with FrontPageAfrica Thursday in Du-Port Road Community, Mr. Manly noted producing cassava is equally important to promoting food security in Liberia.
He disclosed that his company is currently engaged in the production of ‘Power-Gari’ in Nimba County.
On Thursday, he and his team embarked on the distribution of some of his products to various schools in the Du-port Road area to including, New Life Christian Academy Elementary, Junior and Senior High School and Du-port Road Christian Academy.
He also donated food to the Paynesville City cleaning-up team.
He noted that the Power-Gari products are produced in partnership with a company call Silicon JUST.
Power-Gari, according to the Liberian entrepreneur, is a nutritional food product intended to serve the need of underprivileged kids.
“Power-Gari is a mixture of cassava product, salt protein from South Africa and Micro-nutrient from Norway. It also has customized vitamin, palm oil, coconut as well as other local ingredients like ‘Bennie-seed,” he explained.
Manly added that Kawadah Farm is producing three flavors of the Power-Gari which are already on the Liberian Market. They are: Regular Power-Gari, Coconut Power-Gari and Bennie-Seed Power-Gari.
He is looking to expand his products by producing what he termed as “Peanut Butter Gari”.
He explained that some organizations involved with school feeding programs are also partnering with his firm feed over 15 schools.
He named the Monrovia Football Academy, More Than Me International School, Ellen K. Perkins Academy and the Ministry of Justice as some of his partners.
“These organizations buy the food from us. We don’t make a lot of money from the school feeding process. Everything is funded through the retail sales. We sell the small packages in the market and then once we gain capital from that, we use it to fund the school feeding,” Manly said.
“The Power-Gari is produced in two forms: the 250kg bag and the 25 kg bag, which are sold in prices ranging from L$100 to US$250.00.”
Apart from Ganta, Nimba County, Kawadah Farm is also operating in Bomi County, Monrovia and Buchanan Cities, providing jobs for over 70 employees.
At the same time, he noted that local farmers themselves are benefiting through sales of their produce to the company at satisfactory prices.
Meanwhile, he expressed concern over the constraints and heft levy his firm has to pay to release equipment from the FreePort of Monrovia.
“As a small business, we struggle and our ingredient cost US$10,000 to US$15,000 to free our container and the process just rigorous and discouraging at time because we are doing this business out of passion,” Manly said.
He called on management of the National Port Authority to introduce a process that will be more efficient as a means of inspiring Liberian entrepreneurs venture into value addition.