Opinion: Of tech start-ups, lemonades, youth and agriculture

I was a finalist at the 1776 challenge cup hosted by Generation Enterprise in Lagos. The high point of this event were not the pitches but my conversation with two remarkable individuals, Seyi Abolaji of Wilson’s Juice and Tobi Oke of Intel Capital. This post would dwell mainly on the conversation with Seyi.

I first came across Wilson’s Lemonade 3 years ago in Ilorin when I went to meet my prospective in-laws in preparation for my wedding. I was “tripped” lemonade made in Nigeria tasted that great; I was double shocked the Lemonade was made in Ogun State and I had not seen it Lagos. Many months after, I started seeing their products in Lagos, I was so excited to see those bottles that you would think the sales made from the juice went to my bank account. Further enquiry revealed their farm was not far from Winners Chapel in Otta and was run by two brothers so imagine my excitement when I got to meet one of the brothers at the Challenge cup.

I heard their story first hand these brothers started this business from N2, 000, which they have managed to grow organically by sheer hard work, consistency and perseverance. Today, it has grown to a multi-million naira business.

I am an advocate for youth in Agriculture, so naturally our conversation tilted towards that. Seyi raised the issue why youths would see N250, 000 as too small to start an agribusiness venture. The truth is the youths are not at fault. It is impossible to achieve what they have no mental picture for.

Case in point, the country Manager of Google had just given a keynote address and shown the garage where google started. This story connects with a lot of youths.

For instance, one of the reasons a lot of young people are going into tech is because they have seen that big companies like google started from the garage, and they believe they too can start from their one bedroom apartments or hostels in the university.

But how many such stories do you have in the Agric sector? If there are, how many of these stories are told? The popular stories shared around are that poor farmers remain poor, while the rich farmers in Nigeria are former politicians, former presidents or foreigners/foreign investors.

The sad reality is the Nigerian economy and agricultural sector is in a state of emergency and there is a need to resourcefully gear a mass exodus of youths into agriculture.

I am not one to criticise the government, especially the Minister of Agriculture, since I have not been in his shoes before. However, rather than join in the fray of trading blames, these are a number of propositions I believe can translate the Agricultural sector from its comatose state into a more vibrant and fruitful stage.

1. Youths as Potential Man-power – It would take youths to attract young people into Agriculture, use young people in the planning an implementation of programmes to attract youths into agriculture…Please note it’s not by shooting music videos with popular music artists or entertainers.

2. The Media- there is a need to use the media effectively to change the perception of youths in agriculture…The Agenda setting theory in Media aptly covers this…strategically ensure the conversation going on is how powerful the youth are in transforming agriculture, let inspiring stories in Agriculture be told through the Media, enough of analysing how good we were in the past and how we no longer have our groundnut pyramids…we cannot progress by looking backward.

3. Our universities- looking inwards, a lot of machineries, equipment and technologies need to be developed to boost agriculture, let there be inter university/polytechnics/monotechnic competitions to create solutions/machines/equipment to solve some of the problems we have been able to identify in agriculture with prizes that would match the current reality shows like Project fame and Nigerian Idol in terms of value, winning entries should be patented, tested and sent into mass production through the private sector, government doesn’t need to be involved in mass production of successful concepts.

This has worked in bringing out super talented youths in the entertainment industry why not apply same to Agriculture. I strongly believe the solutions to our challenges in the sector are in the hands of youths, the right motivation is needed to bring it out.

4. Bank of Agriculture – the Bank of Agriculture(BOA)single handed has the power to transform the fate of Nigeria, I wish the government could see the huge potential to access credit currently from BOA one needs to have an account, run it for 6 months and have proof of owning a farm to access N250,000 for a first time lender but this bank has an average of five branches per state, it is not linked to switching companies like NIBSS, Etranzact or Interswitch neither does it have a mobile money platform, so how does a genuine youth in agriculture run the account effectively when fund transfers cannot be done into the account from commercial banks, so payment of goods from the farm cannot be made into the BOA account. The trip to the nearest branch of BOA does not even make it worth it to bother.

The Bank of Industry is making giant strides inasmuch as there is room for improvement but they have also taken it a step further by creating apps for SMEs and programmes focused on youth through their NYSC program. Bank of Agriculture needs to wake up, the sleeping giant needs to wake up

5. Processing – there is a need to begin to de-emphasize production and challenge youths to go back to their various villages and begin to add value through processing, they should be trained in leadership, they should mobilise producers(farmers) in their communities to feed the processing facilities. Processing does not need to start from building a big factory, take it a step at a time like Wilson’s lemonade.

The principal point here is we cannot afford to pay lip service to agriculture, especially in this dire times. There is a need to rapidly turn around Nigeria’s fortunes, we have bled too much as a nation the youths need to be drafted in to mould the future and it’s a matter of urgency.

As for Wilson’s lemonade, they now have pink lemonade with the pink colouring from “Zobo” leaves – very innovative right! …I wish the brothers the very best off to sip a lemonade.

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Article written by Aderinoye (Eko) Aderonke

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