Seven weeks ago, I got selected into the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) West Africa Regional Emerging Leaders Program. For the past six weeks I had been involved in an intensive online / onsite course work of the program together with tours to exciting places.
12th March, 2018 I and other selected participant of the program were guided on a tour to Songhai Agricultural Center at Port Novo the capital city of Republic of Benin in the prestigious continent of Africa.
At about some minutes past 9 O’clock on Monday 12th March, 2018 (GMT +1), we arrived Port Novo, Republic of Benin. The city is a developing city with developing infrastructure. The city is inhabited by beautiful black souls who speak French as the country’s official language.
I observed that the way of life of the people was quite different from the way of life of people in my country, Nigeria but there are still some similarities. Based on my online research prior to the tour, Republic of Benin is bordered to the west by Togo, to the east by Nigeria, to the North by Burkina Faso / Niger. The country has an estimated population of approximately 11 million people with a landmass of approximately 100 thousand square kilometers.
Based on my tour, I discovered that Songhai farms mainly known as Songhai Agricultural Center was founded in 1985 by Father Godfrey Nzamujo who is a Nigerian. The farm started out its operation with just 1 hectare of land but today the agricultural center covers large hectares of land mass.
The Farm is concerned with agricultural production and processing compatible with the environment. I.e. The farming practice is environmental friendly and promotes environmental sustainability.
Songhai Agricultural Center is well organized and positioned into three sectors; Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. The primary sector is concerned with the growing and rearing of different varieties and species of plants and domesticated animals. Some important features of the primary section include:
Cage farming system which is a system of net used to rare fingerlings.
Green house system for growing plant in nursery.
The secondary sector is concerned with processing of plant and animal produce from the primary sector. Some important segment of these sector include;
The mechanized soya beans processing center.
Fruit juice processing center.
Section for the processing of meat and fish.
The tertiary sector is the most important and significant aspect of Songhai farms. The sector is concerned with the training of man power in practice of sustainable agriculture (human value). This sector enables the farming practices of Songhai farm to be replicated in another novel environment. The tertiary sector offers internship opportunity and getting enrolled to be trained requires no educational requirement but requires proficiency in French. Individuals enrolled in a training program are engaged in 18 months training session to be equipped with skills to solve problems of Africa using agricultural approaches.
In order to foster a safe, sustainable and healthy in respect to their agricultural practices, the following selected approaches are what Songhai farms adopts;
Stalk from harvested crops such as maize, rice etc are placed back on the soil to help reduce the impact of erosion and intensive growth of weed.
Farm waste are being dumped into a bio-digester. The bio-digester ferment the waste into methane gas. The methane gas is being compressed into cylinders and used for powering electricity in the farm and for domestic cooking.
The whole experience was explosive to my mind. I was able to see some practical solutions to the problems of Africa. The large scale production and processing of food is helping solve the problem of food insecurity in Africa while the production of methane gas for production of electricity against petroleum is helping solve the problem of excessive emission of carbon dioxide, a major influence of climate change into the atmosphere. I am working on replicating a segment of Songhai agricultural practice in my immediate place of origin and thinking on innovative solutions I could provide to solve other problems affecting Africa especially the increased rate of teenage pregnancy.
