Agrinvestec’s Pearl Ranna champions agro-sector focused initiatives

Agrinvestec’s Pearl Ranna

CHAMPIONS AGRO-SECTOR FOCUSED INITIATIVES

Pearl Ranna, an Agricultural Policy Analyst, and a full-time livestock farmer, empowers farmers towards enhanced productivity through training across Sub Saharan Africa. She is the Chief Executive Officer and a Co-Founder of her newly established organization, Agrinvestec, an Agricultural Development and Consultancy Agency which runs two farmer-led programmes: African Young Farmers Network and Mosadi-Peo Support Program.

The two programmes were developed with youth and women farmers in mind. As a mother of one, social entrepreneur and visionary constantly striving for success, Pearl was also keen to focus her attention on the needs of mothers, dedicating her time to establishing a non-profit organization called Mothers Rise Up. This entity supports single mothers in rural and urban Botswana with Agribusiness and Financial literacy, with its collective initiatives making a different to the lives of women with an interest in the agro-based businesses.

Agrinvestec works with the various stakeholders in the agricultural sector including farmers, farmer associations, cooperatives and initiatives in the private and public sector, providing capacity building training and creating grassroot programs for youth and women.

PEARL RANNA’S PATHWAY TO GROWTH In 2016, just two years out of the college with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business, she convened the first-ever Women in Farming Expo held in Botswana, drawing participants from across Southern Africa to network and discuss the barriers and opportunities they face in their respective countries. She proceeded to become the founder and now former Managing Director of Unitech Farming, which provides training and support to youth and female farmers, most of whom are smallholders operating on a couple of acres or less. Unitech trained hundreds of women in basic capacity-building to run a successful farming enterprise.

In 2018, Ranna became the first winner of the Climate Hackathon Challenge under which youths had to address issues relating to adapting or mitigating climate change using the various themes such as agriculture, health, energy and water, basing their solutions on the realities of Botswana.

“We went through an intensive 5 day-long boot camp where we had to develop a climate change solution with a business model approach, and my solution was based on a social enterprise that would work with renewable energy and vertical precision farming in rural Botswana. This was a great success for me and my professional growth,” she added.

With over 10 years accumulative experience in the farming sector, Ranna has firmly developed both youth and women programs in Botswana to catapult access to capacity building, access to market and finance, a peerto-peer mentorship and further to enhance the mobilization of social resources.

“Through our key programs, we have been able to mobilize social resources and create networks of likeminded farmers that come together to share their knowledge while tapping into the opportunities that peer-to-peer mentorships offer to beneficiaries of the program,” says Ranna.

“I am a young person who experienced challenges when I fell in love with farming. Navigating my way around the obstacles made me realize how much skills development and mentorship could pave way for others like myself. That is when I then joined the Botswana Young Farmers Association, and later left to create my own youth program to share knowledge,” she adds.

Being passionate about seeing women succeeding in the agriculture sector which is traditionally perceived as male dominated sector in Botswana, Ranna has also created Young African Farmers Network (YAFN) programme, where her goal is to offer young people a ticket out of poverty. YAFN is a platform where both aspiring and existing young farmers can be upskilled through the necessary knowledge transfer and skills development too.

The YAFN programme leverages peer-to-peer mentorship to support its beneficiaries, provides access to local markets, build on financial investment readiness as well as create a network of like-minded youth who share a common goal of succeeding in Agribusiness and Food Security development.