By Betsy Ramser Jaime
“Benjamin Kwabena Agyei is my name. I come from Nkoranza, in the Bono East region of Ghana.” As a student, Benjamin received a strong educational start, with a scholarship to his Senior High School. Upon finishing high school, he continued his education, where he studied a Bachelor’s in Construction Technology at the University of Education, Winneba Ghana. Wanting to go even further, now he is pursuing a Master’s degree in Technology Management and Entrepreneurship. He shares, ‘My dream is to become University lecturer, a renowned entrepreneur and a philanthropist targeting the homeless people.’
When he’s not working or studying, he loves spending time with his family, as he has a wife and 3 children, all boys.
Benjamin currently operates two businesses. The first is a cosmetics business and the second is an animal farming business. New to the Zidisha community, Benjamin shares where he currently is, and where he’d like to go with his business in the future, ‘I have started a cosmetics business, poultry farming piggery, and other livestock production. The cosmetic store is in full operation and my poultry business is also in an incubation period since the birds are now growing. I plan to add hair products and toiletries to the cosmetic store but I am limited with finance. I don’t want to put “all my eggs in one basket”, I was told is not good practice as an entrepreneur so I want to diversify my business by adding different products to the stock. If I am able to get a higher loan amount from lenders I will use it to stock the cosmetic store with hair products.’
While Benjamin has only been part of the Zidisha community since early 2020, he’s already been able to raise 4 Zidisha funded loans. With his first two loans of $13 and $23, Benjamin was able to purchase food for his livestock and re-stock his cosmetics store with hair supplies.
Seeing success with his first two loans, he requested a third loan in May 2020 for $39 and shared with lenders, ‘Part of the previous loan was used to purchase hair products for sale and the success story is that all the hair products are sold out, my customers are demanding for more hair products to buy so this loan will be used to purchase more hair products. Thank you.’
The following month, in June, Benjamin was able to raise his largest loan yet, $115. With this particular loan, he was able to increase his stock of products, by purchasing his items wholesale. He says, ‘In fact the hair business is very lucrative in my area.’ For Benjamin, receiving larger Zidisha funded loans and being able to purchase his products wholesale will continue to make a big difference in his business.
Recently, on Jun 26, 2020, Benjamin shared this update on his discussion page as he wrote, ‘Greetings lenders, the money was credited to my account yesterday so I took the money first thing this morning went to buy more hair products. Thank you very much. God richly bless you so that you continue becoming blessings to humanity.’
Would you like to impact the life of an entrepreneur like Benjamin? Make sure to head on over to the Browse Projects page to read about other Zidisha business owners changing their communities all around the world.
