By Yero S. Bah
In recent years, young Gambians are embracing entrepreneurship and technological innovations to tackle their challenges in agriculture and other areas of interest to them.
As observed by some young Gambians entrepreneurs, people have now started to connect technology, agriculture and climate change to find possible long-lasting solutions to recent national and global challenges that need global thinking with local approaches.
In agriculture, young people like Mr. Alfu M. Sarr, are into various farming and innovations such as Agrotect or Agribusiness. Skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, Negotiation, Budgeting, Team Motivation, and Business Planning, Sarr, a native of Ndofan village in North Bank Region of the Gambia, found his own “undiluted purpose” of engaging into agric-entrepreneurship which had encouraged him to register an Agribusiness Company called Noble Agrotect, where he’s General Manager from August 2019 to date.
It focuses on organic production and commercialization of high quality agro-products such as honey and cashew related products with affordable delivery services using tricycles in Brikama, West Coast Region.
“I started my business idea at the age of 14 years back at the village in Ndofan in 2004,” General Manager Sarr, who commenced his business {Noble Business Initiative (NBI} by planting cashew seedlings and beekeeping whilst making research and consulting local experts on agribusiness to enhance his knowledge and technical skills on his future adventure of Agrotect and agribusiness, told Mansa Banko Online news media.
The young entrepreneur previously joined Aloe Vera business as a marketing and distributing agent for the “Forever Living Health & Beauty Products”, an American-based company with a branches in different parts of the world, including The Gambia. He explained that, his experience with Aloe Vera Company was a great one, as he underlined that “if we use the right technology and mindsets, we can together transform agriculture in the country”.
Sarr was lucky to benefit from the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) in 2017 following the fall of the Yahya Jammeh regime of the Second Republic. As he recollected, the EU-funded project was seeking unemployed or self-employed youths to render financial support to them through entrepreneurship, as the best possible means to improve on their lives and livelihoods in reinforcing the vital roles youths play in the country’s economic life.
In July 2017, he was among the 60 youths who were luckily selected by the Gambian Chapter of the Global Youth Innovation Network called GYIN Gambia, to undergo a 10-day intensive Entrepreneurship Leadership and Information Technology (ELIT) summer camp to empower them with more entrepreneurship skills. He acknowledged that the summer camp was a great opportunity to be exposed to many enterprise support institutions and access to finance opportunities that are available in the Gambia.
In 2018, the Noble Agrotect GM, who served as Chief Executive Officer of Noble Business Initiative from February 2018–August 2019, was again selected by the Nema/P2RS project for a weeklong training on Business Planning development. He disclosed, “From this workshop, I went straight to register my Noble Agribusiness venture from my transport allowance.”
Sarr put on record that GYIN Gambia ELIT training gave him that entrepreneurial journey and opportunity to scale up his business plans, reasoning that from that fellowship, he was lucky to attend numerous other programs such as the GCCI, GIEPA, NACCUG, NEDI and Start-Up Incubator Gambia, all of which had transformed him into a vibrant Agrotect conscious entrepreneur.“GYIN Gambia ELIT 2017 gave me a lot of opportunities,” he reinforced.
Evidently, Alfu is a lucky guy as he won several awards such as the Rural Youths Award Young Business Innovation of the Year category with a cash price of 25,000 dalasis; YEP Mini-grant of 1000 US dollars; and the YEP miniloan of 2000 US dollars through the Social Development Fund (SDF) to purchase tricycle and modern Honey Extraction Materials in June 2019.
“I have refunded these loans in April 2020,” he told this Medium. He further acknowledged that through GYIN Gambia, he was able to take part in excursions to Dakar, Senegal. The trip to Senegal, organized by GYIN Gambia in partnership with other stakeholders, availed Sarr and others the opportunity to visit some Senegalese entrepreneurs and basically learn from their counterparts there, as well as get a taste of the ecosystem in that neighboring country.
The first ever-elected Chairperson of the North Bank Region Young Entrepreneurs Association said his 10.5 hectares cashew and beekeeping farm is located in his home village of Ndofan, some 16 kilometers away from Barra.
“I am planning to develop my 2.5 hectares SDG garden for cucumber, orange, cashew, banana, strawberry and some seedlings nurseries,” disclosed Sarr. He informed that, as of now, he had submitted his business plan to the Ministry of Youth and Sport–as was advised by the minister in one of his nationwide tours–, IMVF, and Enabel under the Tekki fii project for a possible financial support to scale up his targets of creating 50 decent jobs for both rural and urban youths. Sarr added tha he’s currently waiting for a call from the P2RS project, saying he was among some applicants before the project phased out in December 2019. “I hope they will consider us in the upcoming New Roots Project.”
He recounted that from 2004 to 2016, he had planted 50 cashew seeds in his farms; whilst between 2018 to 2019 he was able to plant over 7000 cashew seeds with assistance from Green Up Gambia with 3000 rural youths.
“Currently, I have 10 Kenyan Top Bar Beehives at my cashew farm,” revealed the rising farmer-cum-beekeeper.
However, like many others, Sarr faces challenges regarding water supply, fencing, transportation, storage and processing facilities. He indicated that lack of proper farming instruments such as tractors, power tillers, water, fencing, milling machines, storage and processing facilities, and transportation are key challenges that he faces on a daily basis, adding that access to finance is another nightmare.
Notwithstanding the constraints, Sarr also has a climate action in which he targets to grow 2000 cashew, 2000 moringa trees and also to manage 100 beehives. He expressed his readiness to work with youth groups and agripreneurs to make North Bank Region green again, and by extension the whole as a whole Gambia.
As a graduate of Shaykh Mahfous Institute with a Higher Diploma in Sales and Marketing Management as well as London Center of Marketing Qualification, General Manager Sarr is adapting different marketing tactics to effectively and efficiently meet the needs of his clientele, by using series of social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to promote his products and services. He’s also reaching out to many Very Important Persons (VIPs) in Gambia and abroad, as he said.
The ambitious Alfu is of the belief that, if Gambians think outside the box, there are many opportunities in the agricultural value chain requiring little investment to start a business. “I hope to see more progressive entrepreneurs moving our economy to compete with international companies,” he remarked.
The award-winning young business owner used this online medium to enjoin his fellow Gambian youths to believe in self-reliance, while encouraging that the country is small but with great potentials.
