Rev Godfrey Nzamujo; Using Agriculture to Challenge Africa's Triple Threat
"Harnessing the opportunity sets around us to build Initiatives that can effectively face the tripleChallenge of Poverty, Environmental Degradation and difﬁcult Demographic transition in Africa" TEDxIKOYI 24th MAY 2012
! ADDRESSING OUR LOGIC OF POVERTY I think that the socio-economic situation today in Africa that we call poverty, is largely due to our incapacity to efﬁciently harness the opportunity sets around us. The drama of our time is that the potentials and opportunity sets (the Environmental and Human capitals) that we have on the continent could drastically reverse the situation and change the socio-economic conditions of millions of people in this region, but we are yet to develop the capacity to recognize and harness them. We in Africa have entered into the logic of Poverty because we are no longer capable of internally generating the capacities to procure goods and services that correspond to our needs and desires The other side of the drama is that passive consumerism and the quick adoption of other peoples’ experiences, solutions, systems of production and values have become cheap substitutes for doing the hard work of growing up and developing native competences and processes that would guarantee sustainable, broad based and inclusive growth on the continent.
SOME OF THE CONSEQUENCES Registering about 3.6% Rural Exodus in the region “ever increasing urban decay.’’ “Slumization” instead of Urbanization A time bomb WE MUST REVERSE THIS LOGIC OF POVERTY!! The challenge therefore before all of us is how to harness these opportunity sets and in the ﬁrst step turn the rural sector around to become productive, efﬁcient and remunerative with the view to seriously tackling the employment problem, triggering off the other sectors and considerably slowing down the massive rural exodus in the region. In other words, it is imperative to make our Agriculture sustainable and competitive. This is an inescapable pathway to a viable, broad-based and inclusive economy in the region.
An Integrated model of rural growth is key to a broad based and inclusive development: AGRICULTURE IS A PART OF A CLUSTER INDUSTRY ! For Agricultural growth to become a motor to socio-economic development and the eradication of poverty it requires the concomitant development of the secondary and tertiary sectors. There must be dynamic forward and backward linkages between Agriculture and the other sectors. ! Agriculture does not develop by itself, but requires a complex integrated system to support it – market its products, and provide inputs, credits and technology and management. ! An integrated development model that includes these services and linkages should be embraced. Rural growth will be difﬁcult to take off without these enabling and complimentary services.
DYNAMIC FORWARD AND BACKWARD LINKAGES BETWEEN SECTORS OF THE ECONOMY TECHNOLOGY TRAINING
THE MAIN DRIVERS IN THIS PROCESS First Driver: A multifunctional Agriculture that is sustainable, viable and competitiveThis Agriculture must be up to the following challenges to constitute a trigger element.1) Provide food in sufﬁcient quantity to a population that is increasingly demanding in term of quality and diversity - Production that delivers sufﬁcient quantities of safe whole-some food items that assist in disease prevention, healthy living and healthy ageing.2) Provide competitive inputs/raw materials for the Agro-Industry3) Provide feed stock for renewable energy supply - This Agriculture must be designed to become an energy source instead of an energy sink4) Provide new environmental products and services- carbon sequestration, Agro-
Second Driver: Sustainable and leapfrogging Technologies• Given the high level of produc2vity required to kick start the process, technologies that only guarantee incremental growth will not be enough. Leapfrogging and sustainable technologies must be deployed.• Technological development therefore has a major role to play in the African Agro-‐ business and socio-‐economic.• The concept of sustainable development implies that we can increase our produc2vity while protec2ng and enhancing our environment.• We must develop technologies that would enable our Agriculture to produce more with less. This is only possible within an integrated system of produc2on where the principles of synergy, complimentarity, supplimentarity and nega2ve entropy are in play.• It must be noted that this agriculture will no longer be primarily a chemical process like the conven2onal Agriculture, but largely a biological process -‐ where our incredible environmental and biological capitals would be fully engaged and harnessed.• We have therefore to relearn the way we prac2ce agriculture. From the way we view the soil and its fer2lity, through the way we maintain, nourish and protect our plants and animals to the way we condi2on and market them.
Third Driver: Appropriate Human Resource! Implementing structures and personnel must be aligned with the dynamics of integrated development and rural growth. Integrated Development is a “cross function” or cross cutting dynamics. It is far from being sectoral. Projects or programs like this would therefore depend mainly on the quality, character and set up of the organization/group responsible for its implementation.! This is one of the major challenges in integrated rural development. The absence of this “core” competence could adversely impact, not just the implementation but the outcomes of development programs.! Multi-skilled Human resource base is therefore imperative: It is only when the core competence has the authority, capacity and the ability to implement “cross-cutting and integrated” activities that rural integrated development programs become realistic.
Forth Driver: Social/ cultural/ organizational capital development• ! Since agriculture is presently carried out by a multitude of subsistent, largely unorganized small holders and various actors, their willingness and ability to participate in any program of change is a crucial factor.• Rural Development is, in effect, a complete transformation of the whole institutional structure of the rural society.• Programs must therefore be designed to mobilize, upgrade and empower the medium and small holders and other indigenous actors for attaining the goals of Broad-based and Inclusive Rural Growth.Other Drivers:5th : Development of innovative sources of Financing6th:Infrastructural development (Roads and communication) and access to Energy - especially modular decentralized and renewable sources.Agriculture: A weapon of mass construction! This model is already demonstrating that despite a myriad of constraints, it is possible for agriculture in Africa to develop, prosper and become attractive.! If these drivers are effectively set into motion in our development programs, our Agriculture would become a weapon of mass construction and the development of a broad based and inclusive socio-economic growth that will effectively ﬁght poverty and bring prosperity to our people.
An Innovative Institution is required to implement this visionThe Songhai Integrated system of development is quite a unique one. It is not just your usual training, technology transfer or produc2on model. It is designed to radically tackle the triple challenge (Agriculture/Food Security, Poverty and the diﬃcult demographic transi2on) facing African countries today in their struggle for an inclusive and broad based Socio-‐economic development. This innova2ve ins2tu2on has four components:1) It is a technology park where new ideas and techniques are developed and contextualized.2) It is an Industrial park/producNon center where the techniques and ideas are turned into enterprises and many diﬀerent types of produc2on ac2vi2es.3) It is an incubaNon/training/human resource development center. Here no 1 (Technology park) and no 2 (Industrial park) become an eﬀec2ve "space" to incubate new competences. We call them the components of the incuba2on "space". Songhai is a mother ﬁrm/farm, an extension space that produces func2onal individuals. The Songhai graduates are brought into a logic of produc2on because Songhai is a producNon, a research and service center. The teacher/animators/managers are ﬁrst of all producers and not talkers. The teachers are bare foot researchers who are con2nually searching for new ideas and techniques to improve their produc2vity and eﬃciency. The teachers are entrepreneurs. 4) Songhai is a service center. The game is not over aUer the ini2al forma2on period. Services like marke2ng, input procurement, networking, ﬁnancial/loan and advisory services are provided to enable the young entrepreneurs to stand on their own.
Songhai core values are not nego8able• The founda2on of Songhai is its core value-‐ Knowledge-‐ Skill -‐ Value system (culture of discipline, solidarity, integrity and strong work ethics.)• This core value has to be appropriated by its leaders/managers and a majority of its work force for it to work.• The inescapable pathway in this process therefore will be the development of a cri2cal mass of individuals that have the capacity (knowledge, skills and values systems) to not only be at home with elements of this challenge (fully understand and comprehend the real needs and desires-‐ from rural to urban areas), but also have the capacity to imagine, innovate and develop appropriate solu2ons)• The Songhai Ini2a2ve is an expression of a “regenera2ve social economy”-‐ (“Une Economie de communion”-‐in French). This ini2a2ve, while strongly reaﬃrming and reac2va2ng the central posi2on of solidarity in social construc2ons, goes steps further to ensure the sustainability of this human value, giving it a “self-‐sustaining” base. A central principle of the Songhai ini2a2ve is that the only way to ﬁght poverty eﬀec2vely is by making the poor produc2ve. This is another way of re-‐edi2ng the famous Chinese saying that “it is be[er to teach someone to ﬁsh than to give him ﬁsh
•All stakeholders in the Songhai ini2a2ve are perpetual militants of the development of a func2onal and responsive African human capital. •The Songhai ini2a2ve is a commitment to an ac2ve and genera2ve use of resources. All resources must be made to circulate within the social fabric of communi2es to make them reproduce themselves. This ini2a2ve is therefore designed to have a snowball and not a trickledown eﬀect. It revitalizes work as the basic structure of modern economy – the enterprise. Here the enterprise becomes the focal point where resources are oriented for the crea2on of wealth. •There is an inbuilt vitality, thanks to the fact that it will always be cons2tuted, animated and facilitated by competent people – the “na2ve competences” or “core socio-‐economic leaders” described above – that are capable crea2vity and solidarity, especially towards the most marginalized. •It must be noted however, that solidarity in this ini2a2ve is detached from the usual prac2ce of social welfare that is characterized by perpetual-‐handouts, as seen in many development programs in Africa and many developing economies.
ZERI Zero EmissionResearch Initiative -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*“Produce more with less”
CONVENTIONAL POULTRY PRODUCTION CHAIN Water Water Infrastructure Energy Packaging Refrigeration Accessories Equipment CONSUMERS Water Labor Money MARKET Labor Ingredients COLD STORAGE Equipment Proc Frozen essed meat PROCESSING Infrastructure and packa ged meat ABATTOIR produ cts Broilers HUSBANDRYInfrastructures QuailsDay Old Chicks Dressed Turkeys meat CONSUMER Labor MARKET LEVEL Ducks LEVEL LOSSES STORAGE Feed LOSSES LEVEL LOSSES Water Blood Waste Water Energy By-products Feather Bones Manure Fat Sewage Waste Water Dead animals
POULTRY CHAIN Bio-gas Energy Bio-gas Bio-gasTHE ALTERNATIVE THAT Packaging Energy Energy SONGHAI PROPOSES Labor Packaging Infrastructure (refrigeration) Water Equipment Infrastructure PRODUCT Labor Infrastructure (refrigeration) M Brewery STORAGE Equipment P AR Wastes MEAT SHOP KE INDUSTRY Infrastructure RO TI AB CE NG AT Smoked PR S by-products of TO Chicken OD Dressed Food processing IR S UC Poultry ribs TI I - Cake (soya, peanuts, Hams ON Live palm kernel, cotton, NG coco, sunflowers…) Poultry Sausages - Cassava peelings ANIMAL Bones NUTRITION FISH Waste Water Fertilization of waste water Water Manure AGRICULTUREaquaculture feather Compost BIO-GAS Maize, Rice, Pond Meat PROCESSING Sorghum, Soya, Fertilization Blood Moringa, etc Fertilization intestine Blood meal ANIMAL NUTRITIONAGRICULTURE AQUACULTURE AGRICULTURE ANIMAL PRODUCTION Maggots
Integrated Production System § Crops § Livestock Primary § Fish Production § Specialty Items Technology Small-Med Marketing Enterprise & Services • “Value Added” • Retail • Food Processing • Restaurants • Manufacturing • Export • Construction
Integrated Production System Crop Production Bioenergy Aquaculture Livestock