August 30, 2018//-W. Stuart Symington, the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, has said that any society that cannot figure out where its people can find food is a failed society.
Ambassador Symington said this on Wednesday in Ibadan, Oyo State, while listening to the presentations of a group of young entrepreneurs under the Enable Youth Agriculture (EYA) programme of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).
Through EYA, IITA has been supporting the dreams and aspirations of many African youth who are gathered under this youth group, to create an umbrella platform for the encouragement of young Africans to choose a career in agriculture.
The about 50 youth, who gathered to receive the US ambassador, were drawn largely from Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Congo and comprised young men and women who graduated from diverse fields of agricultural disciplines.
The initiative, which started at the IITA Headquarters, Ibadan, in August 2012, has grown tremendously, spreading its tentacles across Africa and bringing under its net vibrant, energetic, young people who are trained to become owners and co-owners of independent agribusiness enterprises.
According to the ambassador, the challenge of food production is so important for Africa and indeed the whole world, to surmount that every nation must encourage its youth to go into agriculture, towards boosting food production.
While urging the youth to form value chains with other interests, Symington recommended the Ghanaian model of micro-finance where a whole village was transformed by an internally-generated trade interest model of villagers financing themselves from interests they pulled together to finance one another.
Ambassador Symington also urged the youth to buy products from one another and put together lessons they learn from themselves in the process of learning the agricultural entrepreneurial skills.
“You should buy products from each other. You are your own buyers and you should be your own internal buyers. Put together lessons learnt in the process. Each should learn from the mistakes and experiences of the other.
“You should also learn from the Silicon Valley maxim. In Silicon, they have an expression: ‘If you haven’t failed once, you are not in business.’ You are like Silicon Valley. You will fall; pick yourselves up. Is there anyone who rides a bicycle for the first time without falling down?”
Earlier, the EYA group, through Evelyn Ohanwusi, the Interim Head, Youth in Agribusiness, had made a presentation to the ambassador, on how it operates on a philosophy of “to grow crops, you must grow farmers” and how its goal is to reduce economic marginalisation of African youth through an introduction of modernised agricultural technology, in a way that leads to greater employment opportunities.
Independent.ng
