Exclusive interview with Hennie van der Merwe, CEO of the Agribusiness Development Corporation (ADC), a Stellenbosch-based firm specialising in agribusiness project identification, development, facilitation and management across the African continent. Hennie is also a member of the advisory board of Africa’s Green Economy Summit.
Let’s start with some background on wat ADC does.
We’re essentially a project development and facilitation company operating in the commercial agribusiness environment elsewhere in Africa. We facilitate the development of commercial agribusiness projects and we bring the technical expertise to be able to execute projects from feasibility, bank to implementation and management.
Working in the agri sector, which climate change effects are you noticing the most?
Obviously, I think, looking at the figures, no one can dispute the fact that a large part of Africa is becoming drier. And actually, it plays into the agenda that we’ve been promoting for a long time about the need for irrigation. Just to mention one example, in many places, Africa is not necessarily drought-stricken. There’s plenty of water available, but there is a need for better water management, better water quality management and better water application management, and the fact that it’s linked to intensive agriculture, which means that people are able to better utilise the water that they have, whether they’ve got plenty of water or not.
The fact is that with irrigation and with proper management and application technology, the drop can go further and you can actually, from an economic perspective, produce out of season, which is a great opportunity from an economic point of view, which also makes obviously environmental, economic and business sense.
What success stories come to mind here?
I was actually just talking to someone about two businessmen that I met in Rwanda. They were sitting at a restaurant and I overheard their discussion, and they were passionate about agriculture and agribusiness. Afterwards I joined them and they said, “No, we’re actually both qualified chartered accountants, but we’ve discovered that agriculture can actually be a very profitable business.” And it links on to what I’ve said previously. They said, “we’ve discovered the value of drip irrigation for out-of-season tomato production.” The one gentleman was saying they that were so successful on a small piece of land that they put into tomato production, it’s a couple of hectares, that he is going to leave his job and focus on farming full time.
So, he discovered a couple of things. One very important thing is the use of technology, and drip irrigation is not the simplest of irrigation, but if you do it properly, it applies the right amount of water at the right time. Second, he discovered the value of out-of-season, high-value cropping, which are both things that we are promoting very actively. The fact that in season, there’s an abundance of tomatoes available, but out of season, the prices peak dramatically. And that’s all of West Africa. We’ve worked in Nigeria and seen it there. But this was specifically in Rwanda. The fact that in a very small country with limited land availability, there is the need for intensive commercially focused production.
This stands out as a success story, which these gentlemen discovered by themselves, because it was driven by technology. So we’re passionate about what technology can do to assist the subsistence, small-scale farmers of Africa to make the transition to small-scale commercial farming.
As a new advisory board member for AGES, and the addition of the agri sector to the programme, do the opportunities excite you?
Massively so. I think agriculture and the green economy are synonymous, and Africa being an agribusiness-driven continent with huge potential, I think it’s an overstated fact that agriculture and sustainable agriculture and the circular economy are all terms that are synonymous and I think should be featured at the Summit in future.
Certainly as far as I’m concerned there’s an abundance of opportunities to showcase some of what’s already been done and new technologies. And I think one of the things that I believe we can look at, not only the circular economy but the waste recycling and linking, for instance, black soldier fly production to composting and the value that it brings, not only in fast-tracking the processing of waste, but the fact that you end up with a very valuable product that can go to human and animal use, and you create a compost called frass that can go back into the plant production business.
These are opportunities that I think are ready and ripe for the African market. And there are now technologies on a smaller scale, rather than just large industrial scale technologies, that we’re excited about that we can hopefully bring to the Summit to talk about and specifically from an investor point of view, because if you look at what’s been invested in America, you look at AgFunder and where investment is going, this insect protein business has attracted huge funding. But most of those have been on an industrial scale. We’re seeing the opportunity for the African market in smaller-scale production units. We’re currently working with a technology company on testing the first prototype here in Cape Town.
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