Meet Velache Coker, an entrepreneur from Sierra Leone

Thank you very much for keep supporting the young entrepreneurs from Sierra Leone, monitored by IOM!
As a return to your valuable support, we would like to share with you this month’s Newsletter from the program, that we hope you’d enjoy!

Meet Velache Coker. An entrepreneur with an agribusiness based in Sierra Leone.

Velache Coker was born in Moyamba, Sierra Leone. Even though his dream was to become a professional football player he ended up deciding to open a business. Due to the situation of farming in his country, he decided to start a business in the agriculture sector. His business, Canaan Farm, was created in 2017 to help fight against food insecurity and to get the smallholders farmers out of poverty.
58% of the people employed in Sierra Leone are part of smallholders farmers but it is not enough to feed the entire population. Besides, in Sierra Leone, most of the farmers live under 2 USD per day. According to the statistics, 3.2 millions of Sierra Leoneans lacks food and 60% is living under the poverty line with over a million farmers in the country.
One of the reasons is because access to real- time information about the climate, farming technology, farming education, finance, and the market is a big challenge for smallholders farmers in the rural area, and this often lead to under-production and post-harvest loss.

Canaan Farm was created with the idea to be a bridge between the small farmers in the rural areas and the consumer in the cities and to be able to improve the condition of many farmers in Sierra Leone.
In order to do that, Velache decided to create a website to connect smallholder farmers and to upload their products, and offer a delivery service, once the product is sold.
This simple idea could help farmers and consumers. Consumers would be able to get cheap and quality food and farmers won’t have a post-harvest loss.
However, there is still some help needed to develop this project. The costs of marketing, advertisement, and the cost of the development of the webpage are still needed and that is why entrepreneurs like Velache need your help.
If you are interested in supporting this specific project or check the other available, don’t forget to visit the page of Airfunding for NGO x IOM.
The languages in Sierra Leone
According to the 2004 Census of Sierra Leone, the country has 18 major languages. Krio is the most widely spoken language but it is only spoken by 10% of the population as their primary language. The most spoken primary languages as of 2005 were Mende (32%) and Themne (30%). Although English, as the official language, is spoken in schools, government administration and the media, Krio is widely spoken as a lingua franca. As of 2005, approximately 97% of the population speak the Krio language (either natively, or as a second or third language).
Today, one of the entrepreneurs taught us a few words in Krio. Would you like to learn a bit about it?

Remember that you can directly communicate with these entrepreneurs in the Supporters Community in Facebook. Don’t forget to join the community if you haven’t done it yet, by clicking on the following link!