They came in the tens of thousands, people looking for work,
crowded into the national stadium in Abuja.
The government was recruiting workers and the turnout was simply overwhelming.
Youth unemployment in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa is massive.
In the past 20 years, roughly 20 million youth entered Nigerian workforce,
causing youth unemployment to spike over 60%.
And in the next 20 years, four times that number of people
are estimated to be entering the Nigerian workforce.
Just as oxygen is to fire, so are unemployed youth to insurgencies.
And if 20 million people entering the workforce in the last 20 years
triggered not one, not two, but three insurgencies,
we can only imagine what 80 million will do.
We really don’t have very much time.
The core of what we’re trying to do
is use the power of business and market forces to help solve this problem.
And we believe agriculture is not just Nigeria, but the entire region’s job creation engine.
But the underlying structure isn't why smallholder farmers are poor,
is low economies of scale.
Despite their hard work, they’re getting yields that are typically
about 20% of the yield of other farmers in other developing countries.
So, if you’re able to make small scale farming more profitable,
you’ll create market forces that will draw millions of young people
into the sector as entrepreneurs.
How are you all?
We are very fine.
I am here on behalf of the company called Babban Gona.
We focus on solving this low economy of scale challenge
by helping to build thousands of grass-root level farmer cooperatives.
And supporting each and every member of that cooperative with the services they need
to be highly productive, highly commercial sustainable farmers.
And so, the services that we offer, basically fall into four buckets.
Now the three types of fertilizers we use to assist farmers are these…
Training: training on how to migrate from subsistence to a commercial mindset
and then finally training on how to become a better farmer.
How old is this corn?
About 5 days to 6 days old.
And then, the second service is Credit, where we go out and we assess the size,
the nutrient requirements on the farms,
and so we can tailor a nutrient package on credit,
specifically to that farmer’s needs to optimize their return on investment.
And then the third is a holistic set of inputs,
from land preparation to the highest quality seed,
an individual that visits their farm every two to four weeks,
giving them advice and guidance,
all the way down to harvest, where we literally provide them the needle,
the thread and the bag they package up their products with.
And then finally, we provide them marketing services,
where a farmer deposits their grains, we collateralize that,
get them a loan against the value of that,
and then as their agent, we market that product to leading buyers across the country
and enable our members to dramatically increase their price that they can get for those products.
Some people abandoned their lives
and joined Boko Haram,
which yielded nothing for them.
But when Babban Gona arrived, they helped us become productive farmers,
they helped us to grow and get ahead, and improve our lives.
Before this, I was harvesting 35 to 40 bags.
Now I produce up to 500 bags. All thanks to this program and training.
Next year we expect to hit close to about 20,000 members and rapidly scale.
By 2019 - 2020 we should be well over 100,000 members.
We want to replicate this 30 million times across West Africa,
draining insurgencies of that oxygen they require to survive.