Babban Gona reaffirms commitment to job creation through agric

Having assisted over 110,000 smallholder farmers cumulatively cultivating over 225,000 acres of maize through its Agricultural Franchise Model; Babban Gona, West Africa’s largest maize producing entity, has reaffirmed its commitment towards reducing the alarming trend of unemployment amongst youths in Nigeria.

Babban Gona’s model addresses the rising youth unemployment in West Africa, which has led to increased violence that destabilizes regional economies and threatens to accelerate a migration problem that would dwarf the current refugee crisis. Babban Gona leverages a unique technology platform to make farming more profitable to create millions of youth jobs, interrupting the root causes of violence, stimulating strong economic growth, and alleviating the migration of the unemployed.

“One of the root causes of insecurity in Nigeria is the high rate of youth unemployment, especially in the rural areas,” Kola Masha, managing director, Babban Gona said in a statement.

“We believe that the best way to disrupt this cycle of poverty and democratize wealth is to create equal opportunities for fulfilling work, particularly in the agricultural sector, for the demography who are at risk of being led astray,” Masha said

“It is often believed that youths do not like farming, but this is not the case. What the youths see is that farming provides a low return on efforts, but Babban Gona has been able to demonstrate that farming is very lucrative and can improve their livelihoods,” he added.

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He noted that his organisation uses technology to help members scale and increase their yields rapidly by providing the required training and education, access to cost-effective financing and high-quality inputs, as well as harvesting and marketing support services.

“In 2020 alone, we created over 82,000 jobs in agriculture with more than 50% of these jobs targeted at youths and a third for women,” he stated.

Smallholders are often referred by existing members and can join Babban Gona after undergoing a testing and interview process. Babban Gona members are committed to transitioning their farm operations into commercial enterprises.

In 2020, Babban Gona re-designed its flagship Women Economic Development Initiative (WEDI) with overwhelming success and scaled to supporting over 18,500 rural female entrepreneurs with over 85percent of them falling within the youth demography.

The WEDI programme trains and upskills female entrepreneurs, as well as providing them in-kind lending to set up entrepreneurial ventures.