Every cocoa pod cracked in Ghana carries the promise of livelihoods, national pride, and a $2 billion export economy. But behind the beans that fuel our chocolate dreams lies a post-harvest process that is back-breaking, slow, and often dangerous. For decades, farmers have relied on machetes and bare hands to open pods. This is an exhausting, injury-prone task that limits productivity and incomes.
As a young Ghanaian entrepreneur, I could not accept that in this 21st Century, the hands that feed the world’s sweet tooth still endure so much hardship for so little return. That conviction led my colleagues and me to the birth of Husk Technologies, a social enterprise creating farm-ready machinery and eco-friendly services to make cocoa work smarter, safer, and more profitably. Our core business is to provide innovative technological solutions tailored for the cocoa industry. At the heart of our work is a commitment to making the cocoa value chain more sustainable.
We do this by increasing productivity for cocoa farmers, improving incomes and livelihoods, reducing reliance on manual labour and eliminating child labour, and contributing to climate action through modern, inclusive, and eco-friendly technologies. Our flagship innovation is a lithium-powered, mobile cocoa pod-breaking machine. Designed to travel directly to farms, it can open over 7,000 pods in an hour, separate beans from husks with precision, and eliminate the risks that come with sharp tools and repetitive strain. The result? Farmer productivity soars by more than 700%, and dependence on manual labour drops by over 85%.
We complement our core services with impact-driven initiatives such as tree planting and afforestation, as well as partnering with agencies to provide beekeeping training and starter kits to rural women, youth, and farmers. These activities promote biodiversity, create new income streams for farming communities and empower women and youth in agriculture.
As we celebrate International Youth Day today under the theme, Local Youth Actions for the SDGs and Beyond, I am reminded that our work at Husk Technologies is deeply aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Our work is helping farmers increase their profits and thus contributing to SGD 1, which champions no poverty. In replacing dangerous, labour-intensive pod-breaking with safe, mechanised processes, we advance SDG 3 on good health and well-being, protecting farmers from injury, strain, and fatigue.
Our beekeeping programs and farm service initiatives open doors for rural women to earn their own income, pushing forward SDG 5 on gender equality. With every machine we deploy, we create skilled jobs for youth, raise productivity, and strengthen local economies, delivering on SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth. Our tree-planting and adoption of low-emission, lithium-powered equipment make climate responsibility part of everyday farming, contributing to SDG 13 on climate action.
We are actively seeking partnerships with carbon traders and climate finance organisations to scale our agroforestry initiatives. By integrating tree planting directly into our cocoa pod machine rental services, we aim to provide a more sustainable and cost-effective model for reforestation and carbon offset programs. In addition, we are exploring partnerships with development agencies and financial institutions to provide farm machinery financing solutions.
This will enable farmer groups and cooperatives to purchase our cocoa pod-breaking machines and generate income by renting them out to other farmers, boosting household incomes while increasing access to modern farm technology. We welcome partnerships with institutions, companies, and organisations whose missions align with ours, particularly those focused on strengthening the sustainability of Africa’s cocoa industry, promoting gender equality and youth empowerment, and advancing climate-smart agriculture and responsible production.
This year’s International Youth Day theme is a rallying cry for social enterprises like ours. We are not waiting for solutions from outside. We are building them here, rooted in our own communities, and shaped by the realities we know best. Yet, to unlock our full potential, we need stronger partnerships. Government must integrate mobile agro-mechanisation into national agricultural modernisation programs and extend subsidies or tax breaks to make such technologies widely accessible.
COCOBOD should actively pilot and embed our machines within farmer cooperatives and extension services. Investors and development agencies can help us reach our $250,000 funding target to scale to 100,000 farmers and create 1,000 rural jobs. Climate finance partners can collaborate with us to expand our tree-planting initiatives as part of Ghana’s climate action commitments.
The cocoa industry has always been a pillar of Ghana’s economy. Now, it’s time to make it a model for how youth-led, locally driven innovation can deliver prosperity, resilience, and dignity for our farmers. We have the technology. We have the vision. With the right support, we can transform every cocoa pod cracked into a step toward a stronger, more sustainable future.
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