Fair Supply Chain in Ghana

S U M M A R Y

This project will document a governance model for a last mile supply chain management system that is flexible enough to serve both local spot markets and wider markets. 

After completion the project will deliver (i) a whitepaper, (ii) A technology framework that can be easily copied to support multiple markets, and (iii) a proof-of-consept that provides a concrete example of that our model being successfully on small holder farms in Ghana. 

In a project we started using from Fund 5, we are building a last-mile supply chain that connects small size farms in Ghana with buyers - see project web page here: www.cardanonocode.com/hackathon-detail.htm.

The project is intended to fill the void of supply chain management systems (SCMs) that address the challenge of providing food provenance while imposing minimal disruption of existing processes and meta-data standards adoption. The project is also a laboratory for testing new ideas and includes risk mitigation for participating farmers so risks are absorbed by us not the participating small farmers. 

Last-mile supply chains can be disruptive to local spot markets which help regulate prices by providing bargaining power to the small farmer.

While building this last-mile supply chain, it occurred to us that we are introducing a potentially harmful side effect: By making new markets available through accessible supply chains, we can potentially reduce the competitive leverage provided by local spot markets.

A  W O R R Y I N G  H I S T O RY  O F  A G R I C U L T U R E  S U P P L Y  C H A I N S  I N   A F R I C A

In the last decade, transactions that were traditionally made through local spot markets are now increasingly channeled through vertically-coordinated markets which impose the new requirement on farmers and alter traditional marketing relationships. With the advent of the superstore, like Walmart, the bargaining power of the small farmer has been diminished even further. Large superstores purchase local companies do contract farming and can dictate prices. In 2011, Walmart took a majority stake in Cambridge Food Company, a Ghana store that engages in contracts-farming. Walmart has made similar purchases in contract-farming based companies in South America such as taking a majority stake in CARHCO. The trend of the superstore reduces the number of markets and decreases the options for the small landholder farmer. 

 C O M B A T I N G   O L I G O P O L Y  I N  L A S T   M I L E  S U P P L Y  C H A I N S

Need for new governance models

Most supply chains don't encourage transactions outside of consortium-approved buyers and sellers. We will take the exact opposite approach in our supply chain. Any buyer will be able to purchase from our supply chain at any stage and similarly smallholder farmers will be able to join the supply chain. Thus the supply chain will provide value for the smallholder farmer when selling to local spot markets or international markets. 

S O L U T I O N

Decentralized Identity for Smallholder Farmers

We will build web/mobile applications that implement DID-based document management for SCM documents (partial list below). 

The smallholder farmers will have identities. Identities will also be associated with plots of land and produce. Verifiable documents useful to the buyer will be available on NPFS decentralized storage and can be made available on websites or sent electronically. 

Several documents are generated from the planting of the crop to the last sale to the consumer. These documents provide value to the product by allowing the farmer to prove the food was grown under good conditions and the farmer avoided using harmful chemicals in fertilizer and pesticides. For selling to local spot markets one must present:

1. Certificate of Soil Management - example from Ghana Food & Drug
2. Certificate Of Organic Farming - example from Ghana Food & Drug
3. Packing List

and extra documents for foreign markets:

1. Bill of Lading (BOL)
2. Certificate of Inspection
3. Certificate of Origin
4. Insurance Certificate

Decentralized Identities provide a way for smallholder farmers to digitally verify the quality of their products to customers. The easy digital verification will facilitate the sale of produce in local spot markets as well as more distant markets.  

T E A M

Jonathan KOH (Principal)

Jonathan has over 30 years of experience in providing solutions in the trade arena. Jonathan has hands-on experience in over 40 digital trade/customs/trade facilitation programs globally. He is an expert in trade platforms commonly termed as "single window" which is one of the principal trade facilitation instruments advocated in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement which is in force and ratified by over 170 countries. Jonathan served as the Project Director for the many customs/trade facilitation implementation projects including Kenya, Qatar, and Oman. He was heavily involved in consulting, serving as lead consultant to the Government of Hong Kong SAR for their next-generation Electronic Trade system. He was the lead consultant to the Government of Greece and helped to develop their National Trade Facilitation Strategy and Roadmap. He also led technical assistance/feasibility studies in many countries. He served as an expert resource for ASEAN Economic Community and helped to develop the ASEAN's Seamless Trade Facilitation Indicators.

Jonathan had also served as an expert resource to various international organisations in trade facilitation and policy issues. He was a visiting scholar with the International Monetary Fund, served as a member of the International Advisory Committee for the United Nations Network of Experts for Paperless Trade in Asia and the Pacific (UNNeXT).

Timothy O'Brien (Principal)

Tim has 20 years experience building mission critical applications while working for Raytheon, Citi Group, Deutsche Bank, Bank of Tokyo, Danske Bank, Philips Health, Cerner Health, Norwegian Air Continental Airlines and most recently Google. Tim has worked with Cardano technology since 2019 and is a member of the Atala PRISM Pioneers program. Recently Tim's primary focus is making the power of the blockchain available to everyone. Tim has 6 years of blockchain development and runs blockchain development company with over 15 employers. Tim is a member of Singularity University.

Craig Young (Advisor )

Craig is internationally known as an expert in international payments. As the former CTO of SWIFT and the current CTO of Diem Association Craig has worked tirelessly to make cross-border payments a reality. Craig honed deep technical knowledge, giving me a unique perspective as I've progressed to senior leadership positions. I've served in VP and C-suite roles at global telecommunications and financial services institutions including SWIFT and Verizon, running technology, product development, engineering, and cybersecurity operations.

Gerhard Eschelbeck (Advisor)

Widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on network and system security, Gerhard was invited to present his research in information security to the U.S. Congress, and he is also a frequent speaker at major industry conferences.

He was named one of InfoWorld's 25 Most Influential CTO's in 2003, 2004, and received this honor a third time in 2006. Gerhard is a frequent contributor to the SANS Top 20 experts consensus identifying the most critical security vulnerabilities. Gerhard is also a highly regarded author and is perhaps best known for publishing the "Laws of Vulnerabilities." He is one of the inventors of the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and holds numerous patents in the field of managed network security. 

I M P A C T

How This Proposal Addresses the Challenge

Flexibility at the last mile provided by a governance strategy will over time produce "demand-driven commerce which has the potential to build a market force from the bottom-up that can engage the industrial global supply chain in ways that are not possible without establishing the voice and economic strength of the community digitally". A key point is that farmers can come in and out of the supply chain and can increase their bargaining power by selling aggregated products. Farmers never are asked to commit to serving a single market.  

• Since we are the owners of a supply chain, we have a sure path to increase the Our supply chain and increase the sum of realized production pilots or launches in 2022. 
• Building on no-code and its key objective is to find repeatable patterns that can be "lifted and shifted" to other markets. In this way, we not only address the discovery of repeatable patterns and use-cases but provide a solution to reduce the cost of reuse of repeatable patterns. 
• Participating buyers and sellers will be given DIDs and documents will be issued to them either directly by the Ghana Ghana Food & Drug Administration or by our organization acting as an intermediary. 
• Buyers will verify documents that prove the quality of produce. This will increase the number of verifications on the system. 

 W H A T  S U C C E S S  L O O KS  L I K E

Three Months - Verified 3 parties, buyers and sellers, through local members of the project. Digital identities captured as DIDs. Did's can be verified on a web interface. The interface will be public and audible as well.

Six Months - Successful pilot will be completed in Ghana and a report generated that documents the project and provides best practices and reusable software modules that can be used to start similar projects. 

One Year- White paper that documents new precedents for implementing local supply chains that incorporate local markets and vertical markets that are not disruptive to the local economies and preserve small landholder farms' bargaining power by preserving local spot markets. The whitepaper will be available on the website and posted to the Cardano channel. 

P U B L I C   L A U N C H   D A T E

March 1, 2022

B U D G E T

Project Initiation Phase (2 weeks)

List of Deliverables

1. Project Initiation and Planning Document
2. High Res UX Design Document
3. Project Setup - automated testing repositories
4. High-level architecture Document
5. Low-Level Architecture Document
6. Testing Plan
7. Selection of distributed store, NPFS ...
8. Governance Structures
9. Deployment Plan 
10. Mobile App Development

Budget .......................................................  $4,000

Mobile App Development (5 weeks) 

List of Deliverables

1. CreateRevoke Certificates, 
2. Verify documents, 
3. Add documents, 
4. Integration with distributed document store, NPFS ... 

  Budget ......................................................................... $9,000

Testing & Deployment (5 weeks)

List of Deliverables

1. Integration testing with the distributed data store, NPFS...
2. Testing App 
3. Authoring of video tutorial 
4. Training 
5. Supporting onboarding/verification of existing certificates 
6. Onboarding/verification of existing users 

  Budget ......................................................................... $4,000

TOTAL .............................................................................. 17000

LINKS

(1) https://www.cardanonocode.com/hackathon-detail.html

(2) https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/986961467721999165/pdf/ACS19080-REVISED-OUO-9-Making-Climate-Finance-Work-in-Agriculture-Final-Version.pdf FEASIBILITY

(3) https://www.cardanonocode.com/leadership.html

(4) https://www.cardanonocode.com/leadership.html

(5) https://www.cardanonocode.com/our-teams.html