Find out more about myAgro and Anushka Ratnayake, founder and CEO
(Born 1982)
Career
2011-present: Founder and CEO, myAgro, Bamako, Mali
2008-2011: Director – core program and innovation, One Acre Fund, Bungoma, Kenya – setting up a repayment process for smallholder farmers on microloans
2007-2008: Fellowship programme manager, Kiva.org, San Francisco – enabling individuals to lend small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in the developing world
Education
2000-2004: BA in Literature, University of Santa Cruz, California
Awards
Pop!Tech Fellow, 2014
Rainer Arnhold fellow, 2011-2013
Echoing Green fellow, 2012
One of Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation’s Social Entrepreneurship fellow, 2013
Outside of work
Has three dogs, and is fostering a fourth puppy. Enjoys travel and has visited over 50 countries so far.
Founded in 2011, myAgro provides a micro-savings platform for smallholder farmers in Mali and Senegal to make payments for seeds, fertiliser and training through their mobile phones. myAgro’s clients are customers, rather than beneficiaries, who invest their own money into buying the goods and services they need to increase their harvests and incomes.
myAgro’s headquarters are in Bamako, Mali, and since 2013 it has also had offices in Thiès, Senegal. In 2018, the organisation will be expanding into Tanzania, helped by the Aga Khan Foundation, to work with microcredit groups. Although myAgro has been supported by donors, including the United States Agency for International Development, the challenges of millions of smallholder farmers cannot be met by grants or aid. Much of its financing comes from the farmers themselves – myAgro takes a small margin on all products sold. It aims to be self-supporting by 2021.
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