My name is Samukai Sarnor, and I was born in Mianakor, a small village in Western Liberia. My parents are subsistence farmers, so during our school vacations, I love going to the farm and helping with tasks like serving water. I have always known my grandfather and father to be subsistence farmers, which has led me to question why our family's income from farming has consistently been low and our operations small.

This realization coincided with the Ebola pandemic, during which the school where I was volunteering in Liberia shut down, and most public gatherings were prohibited. During this time, I decided to return to the soil and planted 1,500 cacao trees on about a hectare of land. You can check out our website at tropicalcacao.com.

After earning my Master’s in Applied Economics from George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, in 2024, I returned to Liberia and accepted a position as an economist at the Central Bank of Liberia in the Research, Policy, and Planning department. I continued to focus on how to build an enterprise that addresses a pressing market failure, which I have come to realize affects nearly 60 percent of the population.

Now, I believe the time is ripe for us to unlock value for thousands of farmers and smallholders in Liberia and West Africa as a whole. My guiding question is: “How can we build a digital infrastructure that helps West African smallholders not just grow more but also capture more value?”

I expect to have interactive and effective feedback sessions aimed at strengthening our agricultural ventures, starting with cocoa. We will begin by discussing the challenges faced by smallholder farmers and our vision for a traceability platform and workflow. After that, we will break into small groups to address specific areas such as business model risks and farmer adoption. We will conclude with a session where each group shares their insights.