Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Tuesday 13 February 2018
'Can you dig it?' Africa reality show draws youth to farming

By TOM ODULA food per year, the Alliance
Associated Press for the Green Revolution in
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — As Africa says . Weak or cor-
a student, Leah Wangari rupt land governance is a
imagined a glamorous life challenge, as well as con-
as a globe-trotting flight at- flict.
tendant, not toiling in dirt Yields for major crops re-
and manure. main low compared to
Born and raised in Kenya's other regions of the world.
skyscraper-filled capital, Change must come by em-
Nairobi, the 28-year-old powering the smallholder
said farming had been the farmers who produce 80
last thing on her mind. The percent of the food con-
decision to drop agriculture sumed on the continent,
classes haunted her later, the organization says.
when her efforts in agribusi- Now Wangari is one of
ness investing while running them. After placing second
a fashion venture failed. in "Don't Lose the Plot," she
Clueless, she made her way became a full-time mush-
to an unusual new reality TV room farmer.
show, the first of its kind in In a damp structure of mud
Africa. "Don't Lose the Plot," and clay on the outskirts of
backed by the U.S. govern- In this Jan. 17, 2018 photo, former reality show contestant Leah Wangari shows cabbages at an Nairobi, she has harvested
ment, trains contestants agricultural training farm in Limuru, near the capital Nairobi, in Kenya. her first crop and is prepar-
from Kenya and neighbor- Associated Press ing for her second. She had
ing Tanzania and gives
them plots to cultivate, riers to starting a small busi- training via online platforms
with a $10,000 prize for the ness and challenge the and text message.
most productive. The goal: prejudices against farming- Attracting people to ag-
Prove to young people that related careers, even as riculture is no small chal-
agriculture can be fun and many youths flee rural ar- lenge in Africa, where a
profitable. eas for urban ones. booming young popula-
"Being in reality TV was like "What we hope to achieve tion is often put off by the
the best feeling ever, like a ... is first to show people image of punishing work
dream come true for me," that you can make money and poor, weather-beaten
Wangari said. But she found out of farming, to change farmers.
it exhausting. As callouses the age profile of farmers in "Most young Africans think
built up on her hands, her Africa from 60 to the youth. of farming as back-break-
friends made bets that she And the next thing we want ing labor that pays pea-
wouldn't succeed. to do is to show farmers, nuts," former Nigerian Presi-
"Don't Lose the Plot" is young farmers, that they dent Olusegun Obasanjo, In this Jan. 17, 2018 photo, former reality show contestant Leah
aimed at inspiring youth in can use their mobile and the committee chair for Wangari cultivates cabbages at an agricultural training farm in
East Africa to pursue agri- technology in order to farm the $100,000 annual Africa Limuru, near the capital Nairobi, in Kenya.
business entrepreneurship. and achieve their goals," Food Prize and a farmer Associated Press
Producers said the show producer Patricia Gichinga himself, wrote in the New
wants to demystify the bar- said. The show also offers African magazine last year. "This view, though largely in-
accurate, is to some extent expected to make a $2,500
understandable." profit but took in $1,000 in-
If Africa's youth, who make stead after mites from a
up about 65 percent of nearby chicken house in-
the population, don't ven- vaded and lowered her
ture into agribusiness, "then yield.
there is little chance that "When I see young men in
agriculture will have a the village now sitting idle
transformative impact on I feel disappointed be-
the continent's fortunes," cause there is a lot of idle
Obasanjo wrote. land and they can use it to
Most experts agree that make ends meet," she said.
farming growth can boost "They don't require a lot of
African economies by in- capital but they don't have
creasing trade, creating the information."q
more jobs and improving
food self-sufficiency on a
continent with the highest
occurrence of food insecu-
rity in the world.
But much of the potential
remains untapped. Africa
has over 60 percent of the
In this Jan. 17, 2018 photo, former reality show contestant Leah Wangari inspects the mushrooms world's fertile but unculti-
she is growing in her small mud hut in Kiambu, near the capital Nairobi, in Kenya. vated land while importing
Associated Press $35 billion to $50 billion in