About Akeyo

Empowering farmers

Akeyo was created with the recognition that the empowerment of African farmers requires a new approach.

The issues at hand are vulnerability and poverty, which are made worse by climate change, soil degradation and ecosystem loss.

The key to overcoming these challenges is the resources, capacities and needs of people and farmers themselves. Any scalable solution should start here. Just like useful innovations in other areas.

Many useful technologies and methods exist. Developed by companies, NGOs, and government. The missing link is delivery. Sustainable, scalable delivery. The need is much larger than the reach of government or donor funds. Akeyo believes that with the right financing models, a large share of these needs constitute a potential market. A market that is currently grossly underserved and can be used to scale up the very delivery of goods and services that farmers badly need.

Why the name "Akeyo"?

Akeyo is a vegetable, also known as the African Spider Plant. It's a spinach that is easy to grow and provides a good nutritious supplement.

In some parts of East Africa, Akeyo, or Akeo, is a girl's name, which means "born during harvest".

The name connects to Akeyo's goals on agriculture, people, nature

Who is Akeyo?

Miriam Apell is Akeyo's CEO in charge of everything from strategy and support to the field team, to setting up new systems to monitor and drive progress in sales, savings groups and videos. Miriam has vast experience in entrepreneurship, supply chain management and last-mile delivery. She previously started her own last-mile delivery company and worked as Purchasing Manager at Kyosk, an e-commerce distribution company. Miriam holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Management.

Ole Dahl Rasmussen is the founder of Akeyo. Ole has worked in international development for 15 years, on the intersection of climate change, private-sector agriculture and agricultural finance. He has lived for six years in Burkina Faso and Uganda and visited a large number of agro-businesses, farmers and savings groups. He holds a Master’s in Political Science and a PhD in Development Economics focusing on savings groups and farmers in Malawi.

Ruth Omongole is the Savings Group Manager at Akeyo. She is responsible for developing and deploying the savings group integration. Ruth has extensive experience in implementing the SILC savings group methodology used by Akeyo and has worked as a team leader supervising field-level staff. She is based in Buikwe, Akeyo's pilot area.

Robert Asaba is the Business Development Manager at Akeyo. He is responsible for developing the business and running operations. With experience in scaling sales operations in social enterprises and working with pricing and payment schemes for small businesses.

Akeyo Africa is supported by Joost van Engen through the Health Entrepreneur Incubator. Joost van Engen is CEO of Health Entrepreneurs and leads the incubator. It supports scalable models for last mile service delivery, primarily in rural Africa in line with Healthy Entrepreneur’s own mission. Support includes mentoring, business development and investment sourcing support. Akeyo Africa is the first company to be supported under the HE incubator. Joost is an Ashoka Fellow and holds an MBA from Erasmus University in Rotterdam.