‘Attract youth to farming in Nigeria to fight extremism’

OXFORD, England: Making farming in Nigeria profitable and an attractive livelihood can break the cycles of poverty and unemployment that leave young people vulnerable to extremism, according to the head of a social enterprise working with small farmers.

Low yields and lack of market access trap many smallholder farmers in poverty and drive young people into cities in the hope of finding jobs, putting them at risk of being lured by extremists, said Kola Masha, managing director of Babban Gona.

Nigeria’s north-east, which is dominated by farming, has been poor for decades and an insurgency by Boko Haram has exacerbated problems with the region facing a severe lack of food as many farmers have been unable to plant crops.

To break that cycle Babban Gona — which means “great farm” — aims to turn thousands of subsistence farmers in northern Nigeria into commercial growers by giving them with everything they need from training and credit to seeds and marketing.

“The problem for small farmers in Nigeria, and all over Africa, is economies of scale, no matter how hard they work,” Masha told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Smallholders produce more than 70 per cent of the world’s food but their work needs to be commercially viable to make sure they can feed the growing global population, experts say.

“We’re trying to solve this challenge by helping to build thousands of grassroots level farmer cooperatives and supporting each member with services they need to be highly productive commercial farmers,” Masha said. More than 13,000 Babban Gona smallholders have doubled their yields thanks to the project and increased their net income by 3.5 times that of the average farmer.

While Africa’s recent commodity boom has seen the continent’s economies grow fast, few jobs have been created and youth unemployment is estimated to be up to 50 per cent in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Masha said if smallscale farming can be made profitable, millions of young people could be attracted to the sector.

“Farming is a job creation engine that has the potential to draw millions of young people into the sector as entrepreneurs,” said Masha, who was awarded the $1.25-million Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2017 this week that recognises business leaders whose organisations are having social impact.

“That will also make it harder for extremists to recruit them,” said Masha, who also heads Doreo Partners, an agriculture focused, African impact investing firm. “The next big step is to replicate Babban Gona across West Africa, and then maybe even Southeast Asia,” he said.