TOLA SUMONU.

It is rare to find someone who’s interested in agriculture in Nigeria much less a female. Tola Sumonu, a Nigerian in Diaspora and the president of HARAMBE NIGERIA, the country’s arm of the global Harambe Endeavour Alliance, with a mission to revolutionize the way Nigerian youth engage with the agricultural sector by nurturing them into agri‐entrepreneurs and leaders has come to do something in tow with the Lagos state government’s initiative, ‘Plant a tree’.she has come to enlighten the youth and young people on the importance of agriculture and implore youths to take part in it through her project, ‘Planting the seeds for tomorrow’. Tola, in this interview, reveals that though she was born and even spoon fed with a silver spoon, she certainly knows her onions and why she’s eager for youths to be active in the agricultural sector.

Why did you decide to focus on agriculture?

Our main aim is to strengthen and diversify the Nigerian economy which will aid the battle in alleviating poverty and improving the general state of Nigeria. The agricultural sector is the best avenue to achieve this goal for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if you look at the development history of any country, the agricultural sector has to be developed because it spurs growth in other industries by providing raw materials and labour. On a more micro level, as agriculture develops, food also becomes more available which is clearly needed in our country. Of course a booming agricultural sector is also a source of revenue for countries. Harambe Nigeria as a whole and I have done a lot of research on the importance of the agricultural sector in developing the economy and in particular, how it can be done in Nigeria. In fact, I use almost every opportunity I have to learn more about it and I am my professors are getting very tired of all of my essays revolving around Nigeria’s agricultural sector.

Now of course, no matter how convincing the theory on agricultural development is, we are not just going to take some textbook theory, place in within the Nigerian landscape and then hope it works; that just seems a bit too reminiscent of colonial times. What we know is that Nigeria has a lot of potential to have a vibrant agric sector and we know this because Nigeria had a vibrant agric sector in the past, more specifically in the 50’s and 60’s. At that point, majority of government revenue came from the agric sector and it was the mainstay of the economy. As the agric sector was booming other sectors started to flourish, such as textiles which is very closely related to agriculture, but then all of that stopped when oil came into the picture. Agriculture took a back seat and as oil crises have come and gone, government has half heartedly attempted to revive the sector but these approaches are often abandoned once the oil market picks back up. What I think has resulted is what I call the lollipop theory; basically the same way some lollipops are sweet on the outside and bitter on the inside, that’s how I see Nigeria. Other countries in Africa look up to Nigeria because on the outside we seem like we have it together and we truly have come a long way compared to many other African countries. On the inside though, that is clearly not the case, poverty is vibrant, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that a lot of Nigerians are unemployed, unhealthy and that things are just in a dismal state. I honestly believe that agriculture, if developed properly is a way of sweetening the bitter core because agriculture is a unique sector that can provide jobs and at the same time improve the state of the nation.

We chose to use youth as the agents of change in this sector for many reasons. Firstly, our economy is so under diversified that you have a lot of unemployed youth, even worse you have a lot of university graduates that are unemployed because the banks and oil companies can only take so many workers. If we start to see agriculture as a business, not just subsistence farming or a fun pastime, it can create a lot of private value for youth. On a more sentimental note, Nigeria is facing a serious succession problem. Farming is largely in the hands of the older generation and we still do not produce enough food to sustain the country. If the younger generation does not take a hold of the sector we will be facing serious food security issues in the near future. What this sector needs is vibrancy, energy and innovation; things that Nigerian youth have a lot of.

How did this interest begin?

Harambe Nigeria is a worldwide alliance of African students in America and UK working with our peers in Africa to create entrepreneurial solutions to the problems in our respective countries. I first heard about the Harambe Endeavour at Stanford in October 2007 when it was newly founded; the founders came to give a presentation and I didn’t go but my friend told me about it and I thought it sounded ‘cool’ at the time. The application process was pretty intense; about 7 essays and a full research paper on your African country of choice. School work was pretty hectic because it was my first few months at Stanford and I was still trying to settle in so although I started the application I didn’t work on it for about a month. My exams were over one day before it was all due and I contemplated not completing it because I didn’t think I would be able to complete it in less than 48 hours. I still don’t know why, but I decided that even though I was pretty exhausted from all my exams I would stay up and work on my application. So I took a brief nap, woke up at midnight and worked on the research paper till 6 am. Then I took a nap until 10am, went to library and sat down in one chair until 12.05am when I handed in the entire application. It was 5 minutes late and I was devastated, I thought I would be disqualified and from that moment I didn’t talk about Harambe again because I thought I had put in all of that work for nothing. Over Christmas break I got an email saying that I had been accepted from pools of African students around America that had applied and I was ecstatic!!

After that they put us into groups dependent on our nationality’s which is how Harambe Nigeria was born. There were four of us in the group and the Harambe Endeavour board selected a president based on our previous applications, which was not me at the time. We all had different interests and ideas of how to enhance the Nigerian economy and the lives of Nigerian people and, we started to look at the agricultural sector critically by doing a lot of research and then things just started to make sense. From then we have just pushed ahead and grown so much that while we are still a part of the Harambe Endeavour, we are registered separately in Nigeria as an independent organisation which gives us a little more freedom in our approach.

What do you hope to achieve with Harambe?

Our main mission is to revolutionise the way Nigerian youth engage with the agricultural sector by transforming them into agro-entrepreneurs and leaders. We are hoping to strengthen youth to take charge of the sector and transform it into a success. Once we can achieve that, the possibilities are endless. I firmly believe there is nothing more valuable that inspiration and youth transforming something that is so hard and so complex as the agricultural sector will inspire other youth to make positive changes in their own possible way. Look at the way Nigerian youth have catapulted the Nigerian entertainment scene. We have people singing the songs and doing the dances all the way in Stanford for goodness sake. In the same way, a vibrant Nigerian agricultural sector and economy can be credited to youth.

What would you say you have achieved, concretely, so far?

We have had a number of achievements in the roughly 2 years that we have been in existence. One was our first annual conference on youth and development which we held in Lagos last year but our most momentous achievement till date was the launch of our Harambe Nigeria Incubator for Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development [HISARD] at Obafemi Awolowo University. The HISARD is a well designed 6 phase agro entrepreneurship program that runs over the course of two years. Ten carefully selected students from an application pool of 150 are currently in the first phase that involves engaging in needs assessment with local farmers and youth from selected communities they work with to understand their agro related problems. They also receive monthly workshops and training to prepare them for their entrepreneurial tasks. In the second phase, set to start in October, our students will start developing and implementing entrepreneurial solutions to the agro related problems they have found. Subsequent phases involve our 10 fellows working with secondary school students and local youth to show them the entrepreneurial and business opportunities available within agriculture, using their own experience as an example. Our vision is to scale up roughly every 2 years and implement the HISARD in universities around Nigeria that have agricultural departments.

I know everyone is eager to see what solutions our fellows will come up with and how they will improve the agricultural sustainability of these local communities and transform in legitimate agro-entrepreneurs and we are working with a host of organisations including LEAP Africa and PWC to make sure that their entrepreneurial solutions are effective and the results are properly measured. However, just seeing how far our fellows have come is an achievement within itself. In the application process we challenged them to develop entrepreneurial solutions to their chosen agro related problems and their ideas were fantastic, they are so engaged with the program, continuously providing feedback and taking complete ownership which is what this is all about. As youth we need to stop waiting for others to solve our problems and get out there and do it ourselves. Even now, I am so impressed with them, a few days ago the president of the HISARD told me that they did not want the current ASUU strikes to affect their work so the students have returned to Ife to continue their needs assessment with the local farmers which is just testament to the fact that if youths are given an opportunity that they can relate to and are engaged with, awesome things can really happen. These students are slowly starting to think like entrepreneurs and leaders which is a critical part of the whole process. This is why we have called it an incubator because the idea is that we nurture them and transform them. You should hear some of the ideas that they are already shooting around as they brainstorm possible solutions; in fact you will have the opportunity to hear them talk about their experiences at our upcoming conference on August 28^th.

Some might accuse you of being a silver spoon kid with no real experience of the challenges of agriculture, what do you say to yourself?

I could be cliché and say that my parents have worked hard to give me the best opportunities and I have worked hard to make sure I can maximise these opportunities, which is all true, but at the end of the day, I don’t know why I was born with this so called silver spoon in my mouth and I don’t make excuses for it. What I do know is that everything happens for a reason. God wanted me to grow up in countries around the world but most importantly, God wanted me to be Nigerian, not American, not British, not Dutch, not Scottish but Nigerian, and that comes first. I believe that I have been given all of these opportunities to do something positive for my own country. Despite living in Europe and America, those places are not home and the thought of working there and helping those countries continue to advance while Nigeria lags behind just seems absurd. I believe that all of my opportunities have set me on this path and I intend to follow it. I can’t help what people may say, some may say that because I talk with an accent and I go to school in California, I can’t really connect with people at home. And honestly, I can’t blame people for having those notions. I cannot expect that people that don’t know me will instantly stereotype me and quite frankly that’s something that I cannot change so I don’t worry about it. Now at the same token, I am well aware that I do not look like a farmer, in fact I never claimed to be but I don’t see that as a disadvantage. We have all been given different skills; my skill is bringing people together and providing necessary opportunities. As a body, Harambe Nigeria possesses the necessary skills to transform a neglected sector into an avenue for employment and economic growth. The most important thing is that I don’t think that I am better than anyone of my peers just because of my upbringing. That’s the beauty of Harambe. We recognise that as Nigerians schooling abroad we have had access to a better education so we have had different opportunities but we don’t claim to know everything about Nigeria. That is why we work with Nigerian students on ground that know and face the problems first hand. It provides the best of both worlds and the combination is dynamic.

Tell us about yourself – schools...

I have done a lot of moving around, which means I have attended a lot of schools in a short amount of time but I’ve loved meeting people from around the world and being able to experience different things. I spent the early years of my life in Scotland before moving back to Nigeria where I completed primary school and started secondary school over at Loyola Jesuit College. After that, I did some schooling in Holland, the UK and now Stanford where I am studying economics and urban studies. I’ve always been pretty into my academics, I’m a bit of a geek to be honest but when I’m not studying and I’m not doing Harambe, I love to dance. I do a lot of choreography and I am part of 2 dance groups on campus so I perform quite a lot. I would say I’m pretty easy going most of the time; I try not to let things stress me out too much.

What projects (seminars, events etc) have you done until now?

I’m always trying to find innovative ways to make an impact on people and most importantly to empower them. For me, dance has always been a release and when I was in boarding school in England, I started the first hip hop dance class for younger girls because I think it is an amazing way for young girls to learn confidence and feel comfortable with their bodies and expressing themselves. At Stanford, I previously worked with a non profit organisation that provides tutoring and mentorship to underprivileged students in the Stanford area. It was really interesting because, Stanford is such a rich area that people often tend to forget that there are poor people living in pockets of the surrounding city. My role was to assess the program and create new avenues to improve our impact as well as measure our results. I was also in charge of planning events for the students and I organised our first annual celebration as well as our first fundraiser. I’m also involved in the Stanford Africa Business Forum, of which I will be president in the upcoming school year. We organised an annual conference that brings in business people from around Africa to discuss Africa as a business environment and show others that there is more to Africa that just Malaria, AIDS, Famine and War as popular media would have us believe. It’s about showing the opportunities and positive aspect of Africa to a larger, uninformed audience.

What is this new event about? What do you hope to achieve? And who are you expecting at the event?

Our upcoming conference is titled “Planting the Seeds of Tomorrow.” Our objective is to show youth the entire range of opportunities available within the agricultural sector, ranging from farming to policy. I have been to conferences and presentations where speakers encourage youth to get into farming and honestly the message is getting very redundant. For one, every young person in Nigeria cannot be expected to go into farming. Firstly you have to have somewhat of an interest to do it properly and most importantly, you have to have incentive. You can’t tell a young person to farm without exposing the idea of farming as a business and how it relates to agro business. Similarly, you can’t expect agriculture to be very successful without favourable policies. As youth, we have a variety of skills that can all be applied to improve the entire agricultural sector. Harambe Nigeria is not here to tell young people to go back to the rural areas, pick up a hoe and cutlass and do something to save the future of the economy. That is against human nature, the average person does not work if there is no incentive to invest your skills and patriotism will only make you work so hard. So by using our conference, youth will be able to take a look at the entire agricultural sector and the linkages within it and begin to understand how their own skills can fit in. By having the opportunity to interact with experts in the field and understanding how all the various aspects relate to one another, they will see the incentives for them to invest their time and skills in this overlooked sector.

In Nigeria, we tend to no longer value conferences because we say it is all just talk and no action. I completely understand where this sentiment has come from but because what Harambe Nigeria is trying to do is somewhat unprecedented and is not a sector that youth usually pay attention to, it is crucial that we raise awareness about the viability of the sector. Our conferences aim to transform the negative image that many youth harness about the sector. If youths have a negative image about agriculture, how on earth can you expect to convince them to go into the sector? After years of neglect, Nigerian youths must undergo a reorientation to understand that there is a lot of potential harnessed within the sector. Of course we are not trying to say that it is an easy avenue to go into but Nigerian youth are ingenious and as a whole we are powerful and once we can be convinced that something has got potential we go into it head on. No one ever said solving Nigeria’s problems would be easy, if that was the case we wouldn’t have problems. I get so frustrated when people say agriculture is so hard, of course it is but other countries have done it, why should Nigeria be different. There are many hard working people out there who simply have to be convinced that agriculture is worth their sweat; they have to know that beyond reaping social value, they can actually reap private value.

I am expecting for attendants, especially the youth, to walk away with a better understanding of the agricultural sector as a whole; that is to say that agriculture is not just farming but to recognise the various aspects that it is comprised off and how it all relates to farming. With a better understanding, we are hoping that they will have a transformed image of the sector and see it as a platform for them to invest their time, energy and skills in and begin to explore various avenues within the sector.

What are the things that have struck you as you move around the country for Harambe?

Well the first thing I see is how innovative our young people are. We always hear that Nigerian youths are lazy and up to no good but the things that I have seen really disprove that image. Of course, there are some rotten eggs spoiling the image of the rest of us but what I have seen is very positive. I also see eagerness in not just youth but in members of the older generation for a new approach. I think people are tired growing weary of the inefficiencies of the country. However, sadly I think that majority of the people have become complacent and just started to accept substandard existence of Nigeria, which is really a shame. I see things that make me proud of Nigeria but I see a lot of things that make me angry and upset and it is largely to do with lack of genuine interest that I see in a lot of people who have been given the responsibility to develop this nation. But for every negative image, there are some people that have refused to give up hope and throw their entire beings into trying to change the country in their own special way. Its people like that that refuel my hope in Nigeria

What does Harambe mean?

Harambe means unity. It is about unity of Nigerians abroad and Nigerians at home working together to solve our own problems. On a larger scale it is about the unity of African students, which is what I love about Harambe. There are members of about 18 different countries within the Harambe Endeavour and we all share this common goal of economic and social development in our specific countries and we are working across all kinds of barriers to ensure our success.