He Used to Recommend Chemical Sprays. Now He Makes the Alternative

For years, Gildas Zodomè's job was to tell farmers in Benin which chemical pesticides to spray. Then he saw what those chemicals did to the people using them, and to the land.

So he changed sides. Today his company, BioPhyto, makes the alternative: fertilisers and pesticides made from plants that grow around him.

The adviser who stopped advising chemicals

Gildas worked as an agricultural adviser in Benin. Recommending chemical products was part of the work. But the farmers' health and the land kept paying for it, and he could not ignore that. He went looking for something else.

He did not have to look far. His mother used neem seeds at home, and people said they kept mosquitoes away. As he later told France 2, that was the clue: "I told myself, in that case, there is an active ingredient in there that repels" (translated from French).

Gildas spent three years testing what neem seeds could do.

What BioPhyto makes

The result was two pesticides made from oil pressed from neem seeds. Nothing goes to waste: the shells left over become fertiliser. Other aromatic plants go into the range too, and so does what the elders knew about using plants and crop leftovers on the farm.

BioPhyto makes these inputs in Benin, at Allada in the south and Kandi in the north, from local raw materials. The organic certifier Ecocert approved them as organic farm inputs. When France 2 reported on the company in 2019, the pesticide cost a quarter less than a chemical one, and farmers they met said their yields were better and they felt safer using it.

For a buyer, that means organic fertiliser and crop protection made in West Africa, from plants grown in West Africa, for farmers who want to stop handling chemical sprays.

Building a supply chain from seeds

A company that runs on neem seeds needs a lot of them: 600 tonnes in 2018 alone.

It also needs people. Today more than 2,000 smallholders supply BioPhyto, and most of them are women in rural areas.

By 2019 the organic label had brought demand from beyond Benin, from Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.

How far it has come

The growth since then has been steep. In five years, sales went up almost tenfold: just over 3 million euros in 2025, from around a third of a million in 2020. In 2021 alone, its products reached 200,000 farmers.

BIO, Belgium's development investor, has signed a 2.75 million euro loan with the company. It will pay for solar power, new machines and better transport, more output at home, and a first production unit outside Benin, in Côte d'Ivoire.

For Gildas, it marks the point where the idea proved itself. "Today, I can proudly say that we have achieved our goal," he told BIO.

In August 2026 he was named one of the ten finalists of Africa's Business Heroes. The winners will be chosen in Kigali in December.

How to buy

BioPhyto sells its fertilisers and biopesticides, including the TopBio and AgroBio ranges and neem oil, mainly in Benin and neighbouring countries such as Togo. Prices are on request.

• Website: biophyto.africa

What's next

Besides the new unit in Côte d'Ivoire, BioPhyto wants to grow further across West Africa, in Togo and Senegal among others.

It is a long way from an adviser's desk recommending chemical sprays. But it started with something simple: a mother's habit, and a son who asked why it worked.

Key Takeaways

BioPhyto shows how traditional knowledge can become a modern, certified product when someone tests it properly.

• Old knowledge, new proof. Three years of testing and an organic certification turned a household use of neem into products farmers buy in Benin and beyond.
• Use the whole seed. Oil becomes pesticide and the shells become fertiliser, so one raw material pays twice and less goes to waste.