‘Green revolution’ for African farming
NAIROBI: Jean Bosco Nzeyimana’s company, Habona Ltd, employs 25 young people who collect rubbish, separate plastic and metal, and use organic waste to produce fuel briquettes for cooking.
With the remains from the briquette process, they make organic fertiliser, which is sold to farmers.
“This is a very smart agricultural technology, because this is the place where farmers can get compost that helps them restore the soil quality lost through applying chemical fertilisers,” said Nzeyimana, adding that Habona was producing 50 tons of fuel a month.
Managing the waste also reduces the greenhouse gases that would be emitted into the atmosphere if the rubbish were destroyed by burning it on an open fire, as often happens around markets.
The Rwandan entrepreneur is just one example of young Africans seeking to transform agriculture by using new technologies, while contributing to food security and employment.
Their innovations were showcased at the MasterCard Foundation’s Young Africa Works Summit 2017, held in Kigali in February, aimed at putting young people at the centre of a “green revolution” for Africa that can help equip agriculture to thrive amid climate change.
“The increasing severity of climate change is already amplifying existing stress on water availability and food security in many African countries,” said Anne Miles, the foundation’s director for youth livelihoods and financial inclusion.
“A growing youth population means this group will be particularly vulnerable.”
At the same time, young people are uniquely poised to understand the problem, and to use new methods to make farming sustainable, efficient and profitable even as the planet warms, the foundation believes. Help for women farmers Pilirani Khoza founded the Bunda Female Students Organisation in 2014 to help pay fees for disadvantaged women students on science courses at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Malawi.
In return, the sponsored students act as agricultural extension workers, training poor women farmers to survive harsh climatic conditions.
The students are sent to rural counties, where they each train about 30 women farmers for a month.
They provide the farmers with the inputs and knowledge they need to implement relatively simple methods, such as using small plastic bottles filled with water and pierced at both ends which are tied on to the crop, irrigating it for six months.
So far the project has reached 360 rural farmers, who are making progress in planting trees, growing vegetables and crops that are tolerant of drought and floods, and conserving water in the soil, said Khoza.
Meanwhile, in Kenya, 23-year-old Brian Bosire is the brain behind UjuziKilimo, which means “knowledge farming” in Swahili.
Having seen farmers in his village suffer from poor yields owing to droughts, floods and erratic rains, Bosire developed a handheld electronic sensor that gathers data on soil quality and helps farmers decide what to grow.
The service is operated by extension agents who test the soil and send information and advice to farmers on their cellphones, which they also use to pay for their subscription.
In 2015, Bosire’s company won an award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, recognising its work in developing technology to improve the livelihoods and yields of small-scale farmers.
“One of the 250 farmers who were getting 10 bags of maize from one acre is now earning $300 (R3 986) a month from vegetable farming,” said Bosire. “We are proud that at least the farmer is getting the right knowledge to drive him to profitability.”
In the next two years, the company aims to reach 200 000 Kenyan farmers, he added. Ending hunger Bosire said climate change was one of the biggest challenges facing Africa, because its agriculture was mainly rainfed. One of the best ways to make farmers more resilient was to create solutions that were tailored to smallholders, he said.
Nzeyimana said climate change was “for real”. “Young people, because of the skills they have, have to take a lead in trying to make sure that we mitigate the climate change risks before they hit us the hard way,” he emphasised.
Currently, the fuel briquettes his company produces were sold only in southern Rwanda, but it was planning to build a bigger plant to be able to supply the whole country.
Khoza said young Africans were the drivers of agricultural transformation. “We give hope to other youth that without them, we cannot (meet) the Sustainable Development Goals of ending hunger and poverty,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. New jobs Richard Munang, regional climate change co-ordinator with the UN Environment Programme, said agriculture was key to tackling poverty in Africa. He cited World Bank figures showing that a 10% increase in agricultural productivity on the continent translated into a 7% reduction in poverty.
Agriculture had the potential to reduce African poverty two to four times faster than any other sector, he noted. That was because it employed nearly two-thirds of the population on average, with women producing up to 80% of the food.
Through the agricultural value and supply chains, the sector interacted with technology, logistics and energy – where it could create new income opportunities, Munang said by e-mail.
The best way to achieve this was to consider the full supply chain, not just on-farm production, he said.
For example, information and communications technologies could be used to link producers with markets, and clean energy deployed to power food processing, adding value and employment on both sides. – Reuters
The increasing severity of climate change is already amplifying existing stress on water availability and food security in many African countries