ThreshWorks was born from a simple but urgent observation — smallholder farmers across The Gambia were losing precious harvests to methods that hadn't changed in generations.
"Many farmers still rely on manual methods that are time-consuming, labour-intensive, and inefficient. We are here to change that."
— ThreshWorks Founding TeamThreshWorks was founded with a clear mission — to address the real challenges that smallholder farmers face every single harvest season. Across The Gambia and much of West Africa, post-harvest losses remain one of the biggest threats to farmer income and food security.
After conversations with farmers and visits to farming communities in the Central River Region and West Coast Region, the founding team saw firsthand how exhausting and wasteful manual threshing was. Farmers spent days beating rice stalks by hand, losing grain, losing time, and losing income in the process.
The ThreshWorks team — led by engineers and supported by UNDP and The People of Japan — set out to design a practical, affordable solution that fits the realities of rural farming life. Not a machine built in a laboratory far from the field, but one designed with and for the farmers who will use it.
To develop affordable post-harvest technologies that improve efficiency and reduce losses for smallholder farmers — making practical innovation accessible to the communities that need it most.
To become a leading agricultural innovation company providing practical solutions that transform post-harvest processing across Africa, beginning in The Gambia and expanding to communities beyond.
Every design decision starts with the farmer. Accessibility, ease of use, and local conditions come before everything else.
We build for the real world — rural settings, limited resources, and diverse farming communities — not ideal laboratory conditions.
Our success is measured by how many farmers benefit — reduced labour, reduced grain loss, and improved income for families.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, up to 30% of harvested rice is lost during post-harvest processing. For smallholder farmers already operating on thin margins, this is devastating.
Manual threshing — beating rice stalks against hard surfaces — is the most common method used in The Gambia. It is slow, physically punishing, and wastes grain that families and communities depend on.
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