ZHUL-QI’DA 25, 1429 A.H.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 20, 2008
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Preparing the youth for leadership challenges
By Mary Ekah
On the morning of this particular Wednesday, the Terra Kulture auditorium at Victoria Island, Lagos was filled to capacity with young and aspiring Nigerians. Their mission was to brainstorm on how to proffer lasting solutions to some of the problems in Africa, especially in the economy of the continent.
Some students in the Diaspora had formed a group that would spearhead way for African development through youths. In line with this idea, youths from ten African countries, including Nigeria, have come together to seek for ways of changing for the better the disrespectable image of the continent in the eyes of the world.
Working under the umbrella Harambe Edeavour, a USA-based organisation that connects students in America with African students at home, the groups would work together to find solutions to Africa problems.
To this end, the Harambe Nigeria team, consisting Nigerian youths schooling in American, recently launched a programme called Harambe Incubator for Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development (HISARD) in Lagos during a one-day conference in Lagos. During the conference at the Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, discussions on how youths of the present generation could be of benefit to their communities and agents of development to the nation as a whole was held.
The discussions had panels deliberate on the obstacles to development in Nigeria, especially in agriculture and rural areas. The workshop ended with a discussion on the action plan forward.
“A lot of conferences in Nigeria are always all about discussion and then they go away from the conference and then nothing comes out of it. So all we really want is that at the end, for like an hour and half, the youth would shoot ideas back and forward on how they can really help their local school and community to develop”, the Harambe Nigeria team President, Miss Tola Sunmonu, had said hours before the discussions was flagged off by the Managing Director, Shell Nigeria, Mr. Mutiu Sunmonu.
Speaking further, the President of the Harambe Nigeria team, said that most times, people who are in charge of policy do create policies in the absence of the youth, adding, “So what we really want now is the youth to be able to say what is necessary and also think of what we can do for ourselves. At the end of the programme, we would present our various findings and ideas that we have come across.”
The workshop therefore was targeted at university students and above with special focus on the Niger Delta youths.
“As students in America, it is rare for you to be taught about Africa, the only thing we hear is that there is so much corruption in Africa and nothing is ever going to change that. Even the best teacher in America believes that Africa is a hopeless continent,” the Harambe Nigeria President said.
So these students realising that this is not true, decided to engage the young generation – the youths who are still vibrant and have ideas that can be used for the development of the continent.
The Harambe Nigeria team, she said, would be focusing on Agriculture and Rural Development with Obafemi Awolowo being the starting point for the research in Nigeria.
HISARD, the Harambe Nigeria team President said, would employ about fifteen students of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife studying Agriculture and Technology to help their communities by tackling the issues that hinder the viability and expansion of their local agricultural industries
“When we were doing our research on what to look at in Nigeria, we realised that we wanted to work on something that was not foreign to Nigeria. Agriculture is something that Nigeria has done and we are expecting Nigeria to continue to do it. We are looking at agriculture because we have a situation where oil has been the main focus of the economy while agriculture has been neglected. People don’t tend to see any potential in agriculture and a lot of younger people don’t want to go into farming and agriculture because they don’t see it as a business. Most time the idea of farming is portrayed as a life of poverty. Therefore, we are starting on a small scale with OAU and the idea is to expand it to other universities in the country like the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta among others”, Sunmonu added.
While serving as a necessary resource for their communities, HISARD students, she said will gain the skills necessary for them to assume their position as the next generation of African entrepreneurs, scholars and leaders.
HISARD, the Harambe Nigeria team president said, would connect these brilliant innovative students entrepreneurs with necessary resources to help maximize the agricultural production of their local farms and communities. This, she said, will include gaining access to capital and partnership with relevant government, business, academic and civil society organizations.
Sunmonu, a student of Economics and Social Entrepreneurship, Stanford University California, said HISARD is also going to launch a research in local communities in conjunction with the people in the localities, adding, “We don’t want them to just go in and create what they think is a solution to a problem that might not even exist. So there is going to be a lot of dialogue with the local communities then with that we can now create initiatives that would be based on improving the problems that they found and then implement them.”
Sunmonu who said fund raising for the project would be done in phases noted that the HISARD has the support of Shell, First Bank Plc and NAPEP, Youngstars Foundation among others.
“The idea is that once we are done with the concept, these organisations as well as other institutions that care about us would have the option to review the operation cost and then the funding can go on”, she added.
Sunmonu, who said the conference in Lagos was the first phase of the incubator programme, noted that second phase would be the incubation itself, where the real training of students will take place. She said there was also going go be internship aspect of the programme where Songhai Cultural Centre in the Republic of Benue will allow HISARD students come for a two weeks programme at a discount amount.
On the structure on ground to ensure that the dream continues while she is back to school in UK, she said, “The Vice President Harambe Nigeria, Miss Mary Shodiya, is based in Nigeria, so she would be here to handle things while I am away. OAU is also entrusted in overseeing the Nigeria group. We are also working with other youth groups like LEAP Africa, Nigeria Leadership Initiative and NAPEP; they would also play advisory roles.”
Speaking at the occasion, the Managing Director (MD), First Bank Nigeria Plc, Mr. Ajekigbe, said First Bank is partnering with Harambe because “when we review the proposal from Harambe Endeavour, we saw it as something that is very original.”
The Bank, Ajekigbe said is committed to Agricultural development in Nigeria and so had in July held an international conference for food security in Abuja. Part of the recommendations of the conference, the MD said was the need to mentor young Nigerians in agriculture as the current generation agriculturists were growing old.
“For any system to continue there must be growth, we must bring up young people. So when this came, we saw it as a perfect avenue to raise Nigerian students and make them go into the rural areas, identify problems, get training and go back to sought solutions to these problems”, he noted.
Speaking further, the First Bank boss said, “Part of HISARD strategy was also to link these students up with funding organizations. So that by the time the projects and the business plans gets to us we would assess them and look for products that fits into any of our credit category and we would then work together.”
He said another reason the bank was excited about the project was because when it held the international food security conference, it was as a response to the raging food crisis in the world. About that time, he said rice was the major issue and government was thinking of importing about five hundred thousand tonnes of rice.
“But we at First Bank felt that instead of importing why not begin to look inwardly to local production and let Nigeria be food secured. And part of our recommendation was that we should begin to raise young Nigerian and inspire their interests in agriculture and that is what we are trying to do with HISARD. Of course this not the end of the story, it is a journey. Now we have moved a step from the international conference today and as time goes along things will take shape in the positive ways” Ajekigbe said.
The Harambe Endeavour, which was started by two African students at Southern New Hampshire University, is a group of students of African descent in reputable American colleges and universities seeking to develop innovative, sustainable and entrepreneurial solutions to the challenges of Africa. It has over 40 members split across ten different African countries, which are Ghana, Liberia, Kenya, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Angola, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania and South Africa.
Harambe aims to be the incubator of ideas, talents and resources that will enable Africa transit from the era of pity and charity to that of entrepreneurship and prosperity.
Mary Ekah writes from Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria.
