Developing a Sourcing and Distribution Strategy for Tieme Ndo Social Enterprise

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Tieme Ndo is a social enterprise startup that supplies farm inputs such as fertilizer, improved seeds and weedicides to rural farmers at Nandom in the Upper West Region of Ghana. The startup is committed to boosting crop yields among rural farmers and empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. Tieme Ndo started operation last year in May but was not able to supply the right kind of fertilizers, seeds and weedicides to farmers at the right time. Thus, leading to low crop yields among its portfolio of farmers. Hence the need for this project. The project seeks to identify the operational challenges Tieme Ndo faced in procuring and distributing farm inputs to farmers during its pilot and to orchestrate an efficient means for procuring and distributing the right kind of farm inputs to farmers at the right time. To do this, three workers of the organization were interviewed including one of the co-founders. Agriculture farm input dealers were also interviewed. Various sourcing and distribution strategies often used by organizations around the world were reviewed. Finally, the author proposed parallel sourcing as the sourcing strategy and distributor storage with customer pickup as the distribution strategy. Based on the factor-rating model, three farm input dealers were recommended: AMG, RMG and M&B Seeds and Agricultural Service Ltd to be the suppliers of fertilizer, seeds and weedicides to Tieme Ndo. The proposed solution will help Tieme Ndo save cost of renting an additional warehouse and will also help the organization hold enough sock – about 1000bags of fertilizer and seeds for cash sales.