The Concept

We plan to stimulate commerce and food sustainability at a local level in African communities to reduce poverty and mal nutrition through implementing a microfranchising business model similar to HoneyCare Africa by training and supplying African women the resources they need to grow and harvest a plant called amaranth.

Amaranth provides nearly 75% of the nutrients your body needs to survive and stay healthy.
How it works

We train African women to be able to grow and harvest the amaranth leaves and stock for their families and communities consumption. Amaranth also produces about 40,000-60,000 seeds that are more nutrient rich than quinoa, and chia and it only takes 45-60 days to mature, which is about 1/3 the time of normal cash crops.

How we make money is we pay cash on the spot for these seeds that the African women harvest at fair market rates. The additional income these women will make from a small 10′×10′ piece of land will increase their annual income by 100%. Which is roughly an extra $300-$500 a year.

We then take these seeds and process them for their extremely valuable oil. This oil has a chemical known as squalene which is used heavily in the cosmetic industry and is currently sourced from animal livers. Our amaranth oil will be a less expensive and less harmful substitute oil that we can sell directly to the $14.5 billion cosmetic industry. We already have one buyer and are working to get more.

We need this money to start operations in Africa and began training the Africa women. We were endorsed by Jason Calacanis on his show, This Week In Startups when we pitched our plan. We want to make a difference in Africa, help us make this happen.

Contributor Rewards

Since we plan to purchase so much of the amaranth seed/grain we would like to reward all of our contributers with a one pound of the grain, harvested in Africa, along with a simple recipe guide to prepare meals and a brochure on the impact their contribution had on the people in Africa. All donations $25 or more will receive this gift. However, we appreciate any and all contributions and to back that up, Jason Kirby will contact you directly and personally thank you. Help us make a difference in Africa. We already won an International Competition with this business plan and we want to take it to the next level. Your contributions will help make a great idea on paper into fantastic reality.

Links

This is a video we submitted for the competition “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXDjsZ4_nUY”
PR release about the competition and our winning idea “http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/about/newspubs/n...;
Jason Kirby’s live pitch for Amaranth for Africa to Jason Calacanis on This Week in Startups “http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/” episode 65 at about 2 hours in.
“Leading research on amaranth and its utilization”: http://www.jeffersoninstitute.org/amaranth.php
www.AmaranthForAfrica.com