After spending three decades in the mining industry as an engineer, Joshua Ngoma retired in December 2012 to dedicate his time to developing young African entrepreneurs, specifically in the agriculture industry. He founded the Enterprising Africa Regional Network (EARN) in 2014, which focuses on training and developing successful agripreneurs through its agriculture training and development subsidiary, African Greeneurs.
“I had a lot of support in my career and I’ve always wanted to do something to pay it forward,” Joshua says. He looked at some of the biggest challenges and opportunities facing Africa.
“We’re the youngest continent on the planet, with over 60% of our population under the age of 25,” he explains. “We’re brimming with energy and innovation, which means we can adapt to any situation.”
He adds that Africa holds 65% of the world’s uncultivated arable land – a vast canvas for agricultural development. “The warmer climate extends the growing seasons, amplifying crop yield and farming cycles.” This means agripreneurs can grow crops throughout the year.
However, Africans are failing to utilise this advantage, particularly the youth. “We have high youth unemployment and food insecurity – it makes no sense,” Joshua says.
He saw an opportunity to harness the vigour of the youth and channel it into navigating these challenges to make the most of the untapped opportunities.
“We could address both youth unemployment and food security by developing the African youth into successful agripreneurs.”
Joshua bought an almost nine-hectare piece of land that was covered in bush and converted it into agriculture facilities and fields, with a specific focus on practical training. “There are enough resources and information out there – you can YouTube almost anything today – but we have to learn how to put that knowledge into action,” he says.
African Greeneurs selects people who have an interest in agriculture and entrepreneurship and exposes them to proven best practices and technologies. “We give them practical technical skills training and practical business skills training,” Joshua adds.
Solving industry problems in Africa
The African Greeneurs programme takes place over a year, with the first three months in the Activate Phase consisting of 20% to 30% in class and 70% to 80% in the field. The next nine months is the Accelerate Phase (a full growing season) where agripreneurs in training form pseudo-companies that they have to run like their own businesses, with costs and revenues properly recorded in their books. “We want them to get involved in the entire process,” Joshua says. “There’s a saying that goes: Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, but involve me and I learn.”
“Most businesses fail within the first 18 months because entrepreneurs don’t have the right support,” he adds. Because of this, he ensures that every participant in the program has an exit plan when they leave. “We help them identify land where they can grow and look at the weather conditions, soil quality, and the availability of water. We then use this information to help them build a business plan,” Joshua says.
He explains that this way, they reframe the scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.
EARN helps the new agripreneurs identify a market to sell their products to, and give them access to sorting, processing and packing facilities at our certified pack house. They supply both local supermarkets and international markets with these products.
“Infrastructure is a big challenge for agripreneurs. Most ventures start in rural areas, which means they don’t always have access to roads, public transport, electricity or communication (like the internet, for example),” Joshua says.
He points out that, when you’re in the city, you take some of these things for granted, but when you’re in these rural areas these are considered a luxury. “There should be more concerted efforts from policy-makers to ensure we have these in place as a standard.”
The programme also helps improve their financial literacy and connects them with suppliers and funders in the agriculture industry. “Traditional banks are very conservative in lending to startups because of the perceived risk. We need to have proper policies and skills in place to make it easier to access investment.”
Many participants make profits from their pseudo-companies, which are put into a bank account that they can use as seed funding for their own businesses when they leave.
“Using this model, we can take someone with almost no knowledge of agriculture and develop them into entrepreneurs within 12 months. And because we take in new people every quarter, if we take a minimum of 10 people per cohort, using one stream, we can help create at least 200 agripreneurs in the next five years. And if these employ 50 people on average, we can create 10200 jobs guaranteed in 5 years” Joshua adds.
Agripreneurs combatting climate change
The only thing EARN can’t control is the climate change impact on the agriculture sector. “At the moment we focus on undercover farming so that we can mitigate some of the weather impacts,” Joshua says.
To combat the current droughts across Africa, they’ve installed a big pond on their land at the training centre in Centurion with a capacity of about 10 million litres. At their commercial farm in Elandsfontein, they have two big dams. “Should there be no rain, our Elandsfontein facility, for example, has two dams that would last us four years,” he explains. He adds that, in rural areas, you can build much bigger ponds that will last a lot longer.
“Climate change is here to stay and we need to find ways to work around it,” Joshua emphasises. “The way we grow stuff has to change too. We need to move away from synthetic fertilisers and chemicals and bring in more sustainable methods, like conservation agriculture, agri-forestry and the like.”
Soil degradation is also a problem in the agriculture industry. EARN is working with partners to improve the soil health of their land and improve yields. One of these partners was the CSIR, who developed a compound in their lab that was then tested in EARN’s facilities. “It works very well,” Joshua says. “You put it in the ground once and it brings the soil alive again.”
The farm doesn’t feel the impacts of the energy crisis either, with solar panels that power all their facilities.
Empowering young entrepreneurs for the future
Every cohort of participants brought into the programme comes from the same area. “When they leave, they can work together in their communities to start sustainable agriculture businesses,” Joshua says. “They can impart that knowledge to more community members and create an even bigger ripple effect.”
He adds that he would like to extend the programme to other parts of the continent too. “We want young people all over Africa to understand The Six C’s of Entrepreneurship: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, citizenship and character,” Joshua explains.
According to Joshua, the current education system is killing creativity. “Between the ages of four and seven, children are very creative, but when they reach university, they’ll have lost it.”
He concludes that exposure to entrepreneurship principles encourages young people to think creatively again, innovate and find solutions to the problems society is facing.