CAN SMARTPHONE ALSO GROW CROPS?

The youth of today are hugely important – they are the society of tomorrow. The recently released Post-COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plan says ‘lack of opportunity is the greatest barrier for youth … participation in the economy’. They ‘lack business ideas’. 

I have difficulty visualising the ‘big projects’ of the plan ‘deliberately making provision for the youth and their businesses to be part of the value/supply chains’. That hope has been there for decades with little gained. Nevertheless the plan identifies many business opportunities for the MSME sector, of which our youth would be a key part. Mostly theory as yet, but we wish it well. I don’t, however, see youth and agriculture, in terms of actual growing of crops, brought together in the plan. And with close to 50 per cent employment among the youth all ideas should be explored.  So, here’s one – a youth scheme in agriculture where NAMBoard purchases for local consumption and a liSwati anchor company is engaged to train youth and create for them a value chain for baby vegetables into the external market. But, hang on; our youth are not interested in agriculture. Everyone knows that, though perhaps not why. So here’s a catalyst to change the paradigm – the smartphone.  Yes, more appealing to the youth of today than a top-of-the-range Mercedes. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration (LOL). But the smartphone would be a powerful incentive to draw the youth into agriculture, also providing them with hugely improved research and business communication facilities.  Those in the smartphone business agree.

A project of this nature ticks the boxes – youth employment, fertile soil, tradition of agriculture, skill enhancement, healthy higher-value food, rural development and the substantial northern hemisphere market.  So here’s the shape of it:

In a scheme that would ultimately involve all 350 or so chiefdoms in the country, a pilot scheme could be started in 20 chiefdoms, selected evenly from all four regions. Each chiefdom would be invited to allocate five hectares of flat arable land, either below a mountain (to facilitate an informal piped water supply) or within reasonable walking distance (up to 2kms) of a water source. 

Youth

Ten unemployed youth – ideally below the age of 25 years – would be identified by the chief and community leaders in collaboration with government for each piece of Swazi Nation Land, then trained and capacitated by the anchor company – one of the currently active private sector participants in the principal/out-grower relationship – engaged by government. Formalisation of using these plots of land for commercial purposes would be carried out by Swaziland Commercial Amadoda.

Using NAMBoard together with the anchor company, the youth groups would be judged for quality of work at the end of the first year by appropriately skilled personnel from the Ministry of Agriculture working with the anchor company. It would be a competition but not one where the winner-takes-all. Top-end smartphones would be awarded to all groups – one device per member – that are judged to have worked to an identified and agreed standard. The smartphones, now costing substantially less in the prevailing price-competitive conditions, would be provided by the private sector under the culture of Corporate Social Responsibility. All training and input costs would be provided by government.

Ownership of a smartphone is dominant and highly fashionable, perhaps disproportionately so, among the youth. The device would also be immensely valuable for enhancing research activity into crop production, as well as business communications, including Mobile Money. Access to technical websites would be free.

Responded

If, at the end of year two of the pilot scheme, the youth have responded well, they move on with sustainable livelihoods, while the project could, over a 10-year period, be rolled out to all imiphakatsi. As with existing projects such as SWADE, infrastructure costs should be covered by grant funding. Crop growing and personal inputs would be funded through loans managed by the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund. Government would have to mobilise resources for this but it would rank very high, not least because it would create employment and boost economic activity in rural areas.

Infrastructure, such as fencing, costs money but around the world there are bilateral and multilateral entities itching to provide grant funds to projects that have a direct effect on poverty alleviation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is already financing agricultural projects in Africa. We should not be shy to make a request there. The national media could have a massive impact as champions, with regular publishing of progress in different schemes, through weekly or monthly media coverage of individual groups, their progress and income, with photographs and interviews.  That’ll get the youth queuing up to take part.

Tell me, and explain clearly please, where I’m talking nonsense, or let’s see it launched, helping the Post-COVID-19 Plan make a rapid leap off the starting blocks.

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