Acumen backs Sommalife to build fairer markets and climate-resilient livelihoods for women farmers
A tech-enabled agribusiness empowering thousands of women smallholder farmers through fair markets, traceability, and sustainable land restoration.
- Blog
- Sustainable agriculture
- West Africa
Acumen has invested in Sommalife Limited, an agribusiness helping women smallholder farmers in Ghana access fair markets and earn more from their crops. Sommalife aggregates commodities like shea nuts and soybeans from rural communities—90% of them are women—and links them directly to global food and cosmetics manufacturers. This investment anchors Sommalife’s pre-Series A round and supports its work to build transparent, sustainable agricultural supply chains.
Sommalife addresses some of the most persistent challenges facing rural farming communities: unreliable markets, low farm-gate prices, post-harvest losses, limited skills training, and accelerating environmental degradation. In many villages, women farmers rely on middlemen who offer poor prices and delayed payments, leaving households trapped in volatile income cycles. At the same time, global buyers increasingly require traceability and ethical sourcing—standards that traditional supply chains struggle to meet.
Sommalife bridges this gap through a combination of direct sourcing, community-based training, and market linkage using its proprietary technology, TreeSyt. The company’s TreeSyt platform—built to track crops from farm to buyer—provides real-time traceability data that unlocks premium pricing and trusted global partnerships. Through their network of mobile-empowered community engagement agents, Sommalife also delivers hands-on training in sustainable agriculture, financial literacy, and climate-smart practices. Its conservation work includes 1,500+ acres of protected land, 200,000 seedlings raised, and 27,000 trees saved from commercial destruction.
“My first encounter with Acumen was in 2020, when I began taking courses on Acumen Academy,” said Mawuse Gyisun, Co-Founder and COO of Sommalife.
“Those lessons helped shape how we built Sommalife, with impact and value creation at the center. Acumen joining us as an investor is a full-circle moment. This partnership will help us expand TreeSyt, strengthen field operations, and deepen the economic and climate resilience of the farmers we serve.”
Mawuse Gyisun, Co-Founder and COO of Sommalife
Acumen’s investment will help Sommalife scale its market linkage to 60,000 farmers, expand its processing capacity for shea butter and fully deploy TreeSyt across all zones. The funding will also support continued conservation initiatives across northern Ghana.
“Sommalife is transforming agriculture in Ghana by equipping smallholder farmers, especially women, with the tools and opportunities they need to thrive,” said Feyisola Adekogbe, Investment Manager at Acumen. “Through TreeSyt, nursery development, and tailored training, the company is building sustainable livelihoods at scale. During our field visit, one farmer told us, ‘You don’t teach a child how to eat fish; you teach a child how to catch fish.’ That sentiment captures Sommalife’s mission: empowering communities with lasting skills, dignity, and economic resilience.” Sommalife has already registered 150,000 farmers on TreeSyt, with 40,000 active suppliers. The company expects to reach one million farmers by 2030, integrating traceability, climate resilience, and premium market access into everyday farming practices.
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