The problem we saw
Ghana's agriculture sector generates over $10 billion annually and employs more than half the country's workforce. Yet the 7 million smallholder farmers who grow the food rarely benefit from it. Middlemen — the traders who stand between a farmer's field and a buyer's kitchen — take margins of 20 to 65% on every transaction. For perishables like tomatoes, it can reach 200% during scarcity months.
A maize farmer in the Ashanti Region who grows 15 bags might sell each at GHS 180–220 to a middleman, while the same bag goes for GHS 300–350 at Makola Market in Accra. The farmer has no price visibility, no direct access to buyers, and often no choice but to sell within 48 hours before crops spoil. That margin compression costs Ghanaian farmers an estimated $290 million every year.
The gap in the market
Despite several agtech companies operating in Ghana, no dominant digital marketplace connects farmers directly with domestic buyers. Export-focused platforms, information services, and supply chain aggregators all exist — but the domestic corridor of fresh produce moving from farms to restaurants, hotels, and urban markets remains largely undigitized.
What we're building
FarmLink is a farm-to-buyer marketplace that connects Ghanaian smallholder farmers directly with restaurants, hotels, market traders, and consumers. Farmers list their produce, buyers browse and order, and payments happen instantly through MTN Mobile Money. No middlemen. Transparent prices. Direct connection.
But we're not building just another app. Most rural Ghanaian farmers don't own smartphones — and many can't read well. So FarmLink works on any phone. Farmers access the platform through USSD (dial a shortcode, navigate text menus, done in 45 seconds), receive order notifications as voice calls in Twi and Dagbani, and get paid directly to their MoMo wallets. The smartphone app is there for buyers and tech-savvy farmers, with full offline support for areas with unreliable connectivity.
We take a 3% commission per transaction — a fraction of the 20–65% that middlemen charge. The farmer keeps more, the buyer pays less, and the marketplace sustains itself.
USSD-first
Works on any phone, no internet needed. Built for the 60–70% of farmers who use basic feature phones.
Voice-over-text
Notifications and confirmations in local languages via voice calls. No reading required.
Offline-first
Browse, list, and order without connectivity. Everything syncs when the network returns.
Mobile money native
Payments via MTN MoMo, the platform 73% of Ghanaians already use daily.
Who's behind this
Samuel
Samuel is a developer based in Switzerland with experience building mobile applications using SwiftUI, Firebase, and Supabase. FarmLink Ghana grew from a deep interest in using technology to solve real economic problems in developing markets — particularly the agricultural inefficiencies that cost millions of Ghanaian farmers a fair income every year.
Rather than waiting for a team or venture capital, Samuel chose to bootstrap the entire MVP remotely: researching Ghana's agricultural market, mapping the competitive landscape, designing a technical architecture that works for low-literacy users on basic phones, and building the platform end to end. The approach is deliberate — stay lean, prove the model in one corridor, and grow from real traction rather than pitch decks.
FarmLink is being built with Flutter for the mobile app, Supabase for the backend, PowerSync for offline-first sync, Arkesel for USSD and SMS, and Paystack for mobile money payments.
Why build this remotely?
Remote-founded agtech in Africa isn't new. WARC Group was founded by an Argentinian entrepreneur in Sierra Leone, expanded to Ghana, and raised $7.5M in commercial capital. Agromovil, US-based, operates in Ghana through university partnerships. The model works — with the right local partnerships.
FarmLink's roadmap includes hiring a Ghana-based country manager and commission-based field agents who onboard farmers in person, because every successful agtech company in Ghana has learned the same lesson: digital-only doesn't work. You need human touchpoints on the ground, working through community leaders and Farmer Based Organizations. The technology enables scale, but trust is built face to face.
What's next
FarmLink is currently in active development. The technical architecture is complete, the design system is built, and the MVP is being developed. The platform is being designed to serve farmers and buyers across Ghana, starting with staple crops like maize, cassava, and yams that tolerate existing transport infrastructure, before expanding to perishables and additional regions.
If you're a farmer, buyer, development organization, or potential partner interested in what we're building, we'd love to hear from you.