When food challenge brought US ambassador to Ibadan

Food crisis is a major crisis that the globe currently battles. For countries that have sufficiency of food supplies, they are often wise enough to understand that food shortage in other parts of the globe, especially the Third World, is a direct challenge to them and a clarion call to buckle up and find solutions to this ravaging global challenge. This is, no doubt, why the US Ambassador to Nigeria, His Excellency, Stuart Symington, accompanied by Benjamin Williams, Political and Economic Officer from the office of the US Consulate-General, travelled kilometers to Ibadan, home of the highly reputed International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on August 28, 2018 to engage a select group of youth-called the IITA Youth Agripreneurs, (IYA) so, as to learn about the progress of the Institute’s Youth-in-Agribusiness initiatives.

The about 50 youths 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 across Africa and bringing under its net vibrant, energetic, young people who are trained to become owners and co-owners of independent agribusiness enterprises.

The ambassador drove into the sedate and lush premises of the institute at about 3.45pm. The director general, Dr. Nteranya Sanginga and deputy director-general for Partnerships for Delivery, Kenton Dashiell;  key IITA staff, IYA members, and delegates of the Ivorian government who were visiting IITA to learn about the Youth-in-Agribusiness programme in preparation for the implementation of the ENABLE Youth programme, were on hand to receive the ambassador and Williams.

Gathered inside one of the halls of the IITA, the session was like a town hall meeting to situate the challenges of food production. The compere of the occasion, Festus Okunlola, who was one of the youth members of the IYA, began by thanking the ambassador for being bothered enough about the food problem in Africa and Nigeria to leave all his assignments and head for the IITA. When it comes to introduction of the youths, numbering about 50, Ambassador Symington had counsel for some of them who were inaudible when it came to their affiliations.

“Oftentimes, when people get to the most important part of a sentence, they talk lowly,” he said, advising that the most important part of an introduction is not the name of the person doing self-introduction but what the owner of the name does for a living.

Then came a presentation of the strides made so far by IYA, anchored by Evelyn Ohanwusi, interim head, IITA Youth-in-Agribusiness Office. An articulate young lady, Ohanwusi gave an overview and update of IITA’s youth agribusiness initiatives, especially highlighting the ENABLE-Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) programme funded by the African Development Bank. She emphasized the programme’s target of raising US$12.5 billion and investing in about 32 African countries. She said this can easily be achieved by having the right partners and investors who believe in the youths taking control of the future through their involvement in agriculture.

Within a short period of time, according to the group, the IYA initiative had recorded successes and become a model that was found adoptable by organizations and corporate bodies, executed as youth in agribusiness projects.

As she made the presentation, Ambassador Symington, asking questions and seeking clarifications, left where he sat, pulled up the sleeves of his shirt and drew his chair to a place proximate to the screen for effective sighting of the data being reeled out. It was obvious that he was in the know of this initiative and was convinced that it has the potential of bailing out Nigeria from its own offering of global food crises.

Ibukun Agbotoba, cofounder of Afribroiler Nigerian Limited., one of the attendees, also talked about her experiences in setting up her business, Afribroiler, a youth agribusiness run by enthusiastic university graduates who were incubated in the IYA programme and supported by the company, Stratadvance LP.

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Afribroiler, according to Agbotoba, aims to grow a franchise network of small-scale commercial feed-to-fork broiler enterprises. Together with partners, they plan to establish a reference-farm with feed mill, breeding, incubating/hatching, growing, processing and retail/food units for research, training, and demonstration in best-fit technologies and practices suitable for youth businesses.

Ambassador Symington asked the youth a lot of questions and expressed satisfaction and excitement about their agribusiness initiatives and IITA’s transformation agenda. He also encouraged the youths to work as a team to achieve the common goal of building successful business empires in the future. When one of the youths, apologised that his details could bore the ambassador, Symington immediately interjected that anything that would bring Nigeria close to food sufficiency can never bore him.

To ensure that their agribusinesses works, Ambassador Symington motivated the youths. He lauded efforts to create jobs for African youths, stating that any society that cannot figure out where its people can find food is a failed society. In the process of his extempore deliveries, he gave several nuggets of advice to the youth which he delivered, avuncular. For instance, he underscored the use of advocacy in agribusiness, maintaining that there are several countrymen who are interested in acting as angel investors for their business plans. Specifically, the ambassador told the youths that he speaks with at least two Nigerians on a weekly basis, who express the desire to fund businesses like agriculture. He also admonished them that for their agricultural models of value-chain businesses to work and be appealing to angel investors, the model must be such that it would “readily catch fire” with the would-be investor.

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 youths 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 pooled to finance one another.

In his own remarks, the Director General of IITA, Dr. Nterenya Sanginga, told the Ambassador of a meeting he once had in Missouri, United States, with some Nigerian professors who did not want to come back to Nigeria and how he challenged them on the need to strengthen the agricultural strides being made back home, stating that in the next 30 years, the food to be consumed by the world would be produced in Africa.

On behalf of IYA, Dare Odusanya, another youth agripreneur under the Business Incubation Platform (BIP), expressed appreciation for the Ambassador’s inspiring and motivating words: “We are more than grateful for your presence and we are very positive that when next we meet, we would be able to tell you our success stories,” he said.

After the interaction, Ambassador Symington and Williams were treated to a cocktail by IITA, with the ambassador, on his feet, attending to the youths who, using the opportunity, had personal questions and demands for the growth of their businesses from the United States’ representative.

Symington then toasted to the long life of the institute, stating that he was fascinated by the ambience of IITA and citing it as an example of an institution in Nigeria where everything works.

Also present at the event was Katherine Lopez, Head Communications Unit, IITA, among others.

*Dr. Adedayo is on the editorial board of the Tribune.