Hi colleagues
I want to introduce my company NjordFrey to all of you.
I have been working on this project the past 6 years in Rwanda, East Africa, and since 2018 my co-founder and I started NjordFrey. We want to bring the best possible solutions to assist and support subsistence smallholder farmers in developing countries. For a number of reasons we settled on using aquaponics as the growing method, and build a larger product and business model around it. (I will not bore you with all the details but have put a couple of links at the end of this if you are interested)
The basics of the model is that we are finding groups or cooperatives of at least 40 farmers, and with them we build 1 hectare of aquaponics. 6 fish tanks (30m³ each) with a total of 20.000 tilapia, and more than 4000m² of DWC and media bed grow space. The system is a decoupled system with a 7-10m³ swirl filter and a 7-10m³ bio reactor (bubbles and k2 media) for every fish tank. We assist the farmers with an array of off the shelf and novel sensors, which gather data on these “outgrower farms” and relay them back to a central location where our experts can decipher them and give direct and fast feedback to the farmers.
The goal is the increase individual farmer income 10-fold from their current financial standing. The full outgrower farm capital cost should be repaid within 2-4 years from the production.
NjordFrey aim to deploy 2000 of these 1Ha outgrower farms within the next 10 years.
In may last year (2022) we finally managed to launch out flagship farm in the Eastern district of Rwanda, Kayonza. (Map localtion) . Marking it as the first ever commercial aquaponic system in Rwanda. This made us quite proud.
It is no secret that setting up an operation like this is quite expensive, and getting to 2000 farms would be a colossal undertaking. So far we have build the company with our own money, bootstrapping all the way, and collaborations with different universities, with the largest project in partnership with the University of the West of Scotland.
We are still in the proof of concept phase and will probably need 3-6 more months to have the system running optimally.
As part of this entrepreneurial journey, we are finalists in different accelerator and incubator programs. This is where we need your help.
In spring 2022 we were chosen as 1 of 25 finalist for the Milken-Motsepe Prize (Link). An international accelerator and competition to massively improve the yield, income and livelihood of African farmers. They are partnering with World Food Programme to help scientific method and documentation, and we were even offered a course on Stanford University.
This month of February (until the 22nd) sees the Milken-Motsepe People’s Choice Award. This gives NjordFrey, as one of the 25 finalist, the opportunity to win a bonus prize of $100,000! This prize would be amazing in accelerating our goals for the year and reaching our full sized 1ha production goal. Therefore, we would like to humbly request your help and vote for NjordFrey. Please follow the link and click our logo to submit: http://bit.ly/3Y0JVM8
This would help NjordFrey and hopefully the whole aquaponic sector.
(thank you)
We are constantly developing and are always looking for new partnerships and collaborations. So don’t hesitate to reach out if you are interested.
If you have any questions we will try an answer them best we can.
If you have any suggestions on how we can do everything better, please let us know.
If you are interested in learning more we have a website
There are a couple of interviews with myself, on what we are trying to achieve:
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2021/njordfrey-ceo-on-the-role-of-social-enterprises-in-advancing-sustainable-farming/
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9Iq0vC4CxkI&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE
Thank you for generally being an awesome bunch of people.
/Lars
