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Ghana techpreneurs steal two spots in Forbes 30 Under 30 technology

Meet 2018’s new class of tech 30 under 30 in Africa. Three Ghanaians made it to the list

Forbes Africa recently released its 30 under 30 series which was split into three: Creative, Technology and Business. Out of the 30 spots in the technology category two have been taken by techpreneurs from Ghana.

This is the fourth edition of the 2018 FORBES AFRICA Under 30 list.

Forbes Africa says it put in months of rigorous research, sifting through over 600 nominations, vetting them for weeks, verifying and investigating them.

The financial publisher also favoured entrepreneurs with fresh ideas and took into account their business size, revenue, location, potential, struggles, social impact and resilience.

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Meet the Ghanaians who made it.

Kofi Genfi & Nii Osae Osae Dade, 24, Ghana

This duo founded CYST, a software innovation company that specializes in artificial intelligence to create technology solutions in 2013. CYST has a research arm called CYST Research Institute, which focuses on artificial intelligence-based research and development such as natural language processing. In partnership with the telecommunications companies, CYST has access to over 15 million subscribers through its platforms. They count MTN Ghana, Vodafone Ghana, AirtelTigo Ghana, Unity Link and Data Protection Commission among their affiliates. It means over 15 million subscribers through its platforms.

CYST’s flagship product, Mazzuma, is a mobile money payment system that utilizes distributed secure infrastructure and cryptocurrency to enable seamless payments. The Mazzuma token, referred to as MAZ, is a key payment medium in the Mazzuma ecosystem. Transactions made on the Mazzuma platform are instantaneous.

Abraham Omani Quaye, 28, Ghana

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Founder: Farmart

After completing his undergraduate degree in agricultural sciences, he decided to go into farming. During his search for land, he came across farmers who complained about their produce going to waste because of low fresh sales.

“To avoid this, they’ll have to sell their produce off cheaply to the middlemen to avoid getting nothing out of their hard work. I also discovered in Ghana, farmers suffer over 30% post-harvest losses which is really unfortunate,” he says.

Quaye was motivated to not just be a farmer but a digital farmer and help other farmers have access to a ready market, reduce post-harvest losses and increase their return on investments. He founded Farmart, an online farmers’ market that links farmers to households and businesses. When an order is placed on their website, they source fresh produce from farmers and deliver to the client. They deliver produce and groceries in Accra, Tema and Kasoa.

“When we started the business, we didn’t have enough bikes to make deliveries which made us lose some deliveries and we quickly partnered with logistics firms who now support us when there’s a spike in orders. We also faced lots of challenges with lack of some produce and we decided to start Farmart.”

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It has won recognition such as the 2017 Pitch AgriHack Africa winner by Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation.

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