Mohamed Sowe, CEO of Pee Cee Agriculture
By Caitríona Palmer and Birom Seck
In Sierra Leone, a first-of-its-kind farm is helping make the country self-sufficient in onion production.
For Mohamed Sowe, there is something magical in the transformative power of a tiny onion seed.
In just four months, with the right conditions, Sowe says, the seed, as small as a grain of sand, can yield a robust vegetable weighing more than a pound.
Sowe is the soft-spoken CEO of Pee Cee Agriculture, based in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and for the past four years, onions have preoccupied his life. Sowe oversees the first large-scale commercial farming operation in Sierra Leone focused on the local market. The farm, located 50km from Freetown, the capital city, is already producing onions at yields more than ten times higher than local farmers, reducing the country’s reliance on imports.
Before Pee Cee Agriculture, commercial onion farming had never taken root in Sierra Leone. The farm’s parent company, Pee Cee Holdings (PCH), a privately-owned consumer goods group, imports more than 80% of the country’s onions. But a severe shortage during the Covid-19 crisis laid bare the risks of an overreliance on imports for staple food products. That’s when Pee Cee’s executive team came up with a bold idea: why not just grow the onions themselves?
“The farm means more to Pee Cee Holdings than just profit making,” Sowe says. “It demonstrates our ability and willingness to go into sustainable strategies that create jobs, employment, and that complete the value chain from farming to the up-market. It is critical for Pee Cee Holdings to have industries that produce and seed and grow things in Sierra Leone.”
With support from International Finance Corporation (IFC), the strategy has paid off. Since 2021, IFC experts have partnered with Pee Cee Agriculture to help the company strengthen their management team, and improve agricultural and irrigation practices
Now, both IFC and Pee Cee are taking things to the next level, with a $12 million loan to scale up operations. The loan will help Pee Cee purchase new processing machinery and build storage facilities.
In Freetown’s bustling and energetic Dove Cot market, scores of street-side onion traders sell bulky netted bags of Pee Cee onions.
The ultimate goal, says Mahesh Nandwani, the CEO of PCH, is to grow enough onions not only to satisfy the local market, but also to create an entirely new export industry. Nandwani, a second-generation Indian Sierra Leonean, who grew his father’s small business into Sierra Leone’s largest import, distribution and manufacturing company, believes that this homegrown onion operation has global reach.
“If we do a proper job, this country can go back to the days where we were not only growing food for ourselves, we were also exporting something,” Nandwani says. “Those were the golden days. We should bring them back.”
From the swamps to the highlands: growing the perfect onion
In late 2021, Luc Terryn, a Belgian farmer and horticulture expert, was at home in Dakar, Senegal, when his phone rang. On the line was Jean Habay, an IFC investment officer for agribusiness. Habay had a proposal: could Terryn come to Sierra Leone to help advise an onion farm in the early stages of production? It would only take a few days, he added.
“That was three-and-a-half years ago,” says Terryn, with a laugh. “I am still here.”
At that time, Pee Cee’s early forays into onion production were not going well. The company’s chosen plot of land was yielding few onions, and those that grew were poor in quality. IFC, approached by PCH for potential financing, was not comfortable moving forward until an IFC incubator team could help PCH prove their concept. Terryn, who had successfully expanded a potato and onion farm in Poland years from 100 hectares to 700, was brought in.
Terryn could see immediately what the problem was. The land was too swampy and could not accommodate mechanised farming. The soil pH level was also poor. The farm would need to be moved somewhere else. But, despite these challenges, Terryn saw something else: “I saw a lot of possibilities to grow onions in Sierra Leone,” he says.
Terryn found a new location, a higher swath of land near Freetown’s international airport in Lungi, a northern province. Now working as Pee Cee’s farm manager, Terryn set about clearing bush, establishing boreholes, installing drip and pivot irrigation systems, and improving the soil pH levels. A detailed business plan to purchase the right equipment and inputs was finalised.
With the current harvest almost complete, Mohamed Sowe is already looking ahead. Next season, he hopes to increase the farm by another 35 hectares. By 2030, the farm will extend to 500 hectares and will produce enough onions to make the country self-sufficient in a staple that is key for food and nutrition security. The farm is already growing maize and, in time, will also grow potatoes alongside onions. Plans are also in place for an outreach program, where Pee Cee will distribute inputs and provide expertise to smallholder farmers to grow various crops that will improve the diet of local communities.
Despite the early challenges, Sowe is glad for the rigor and discipline that Pee Cee undertook to get things right at the start. To be a pioneer in industry, Sowe says, you must take your time and make tough decisions. “If the foundation is good, then the outcome will be good,” he said.
Sowe shakes his head at the impossibility, once again, that a tiny seed could lead to all this.
“The challenge has been serious,” Sowe says, “but the results have been sweet.”
This article was first published by the IFC. The original has been edited for length.
