Strategies to increase the productivity of farmers with Ibrahim Maigari

Transcription

[00:00:00] INTRO

[00:00:44] Sharon Idahosa: Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to another episode of our technology series, where we explore the innovative solutions, trends and advancement that are shaping the future of farming and agribusiness. This episode is brought to you by Let’s Talk Agriculture; An industry specific public relations and communications firm specializing in agriculture.

[00:01:06] Sharon Idahosa: So if you’re an agriculture business looking to build your brand, establish total leadership, host industry events, or train your employees on leadership, communication, and more, then quickly visit letstalkagriculture. com to get started. So in today’s episode, we want to look at some of the strategies to increase the productivity of farmers.

[00:01:28] Sharon Idahosa: And we have the best person right here to share his insights with us. So friends join me. Welcome Ibrahim Maigari, the CEO of Rise Africa, a remarkable player, revolutionizing agriculture through technology. Thank you so much for joining the show today. How are you doing?

[00:01:47] Ibrahim Maigari: I’m doing fine, Sharon. Thank you.

[00:01:49] Sharon Idahosa: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to have you. Hopefully I got your name correctly.

[00:01:53] Ibrahim Maigari: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, perfect, perfect. I was looking out for that, but you got it right.

[00:01:59] Sharon Idahosa: Thank you. So I would just really like to know a little bit more about you. I mean, I’m sure my audience would like to, you know, want to hear a little bit about you.

[00:02:09] Sharon Idahosa: I mean, I didn’t give a really thorough introduction. So please tell us a little bit about you. What’s your journey like in the agriculture industry?

[00:02:16] Ibrahim Maigari: So thank you once again Sharon for having me. I, I sincerely commend you for the beautiful work you’re doing and spotlighting the activities of many players in the agricultural space.

[00:02:29] Ibrahim Maigari: I think we need more. So yeah, um, my name is Ibrahim. Um, I’ve been a lawyer for, this is my decade as a lawyer, but, uh, my journey into technology, uh, started about, um, I’ve been involved in starting managing. Co-founding of technology startups in Nigeria. Um, our journey in technology started with, uh, with animal identification and management system.

[00:02:54] Ibrahim Maigari: I, if you can remember, if you a couple years in Africa, MTN launch a protocol, MTN Animal Identification System, that was a partnership, uh, with our company back then. Identification and management system in Sub-Saharan Africa in partnership with MTN. Um, that’s how I got into Agric, um, uh, established livestock 24/7.

[00:03:16] Ibrahim Maigari: Livestock247.com is still there. It’s Nigeria’s, uh, premier Livestock, uh, platform. And I was a CEO for about five years. Being with Livestock247, mainstreaming the livestock sector through technology gave me a first hand, um, experience to see the convergence of technology and agriculture. So, my, my experience in livestock upon Actually, with RISE Africa that we started, uh, five years ago, just before the COVID lockdown, and we launched RISE Africa as a platform to, um, facilitate interactions among stakeholders in the smallholder farming community and wheat farmers.

[00:03:57] Ibrahim Maigari: That also, you know, is typical of a [00:04:00] startup becoming a mechanization service provider because we realized early that the biggest problem back Smallholder farmers were facing was, um, access to affordable. We veered a little bit and imported harvester machines and we created a harvester hiring system around the country where we were giving farmers access.

[00:04:23] Ibrahim Maigari: You know, smallholder farmers do not have the capacity to buy Um, $50,000 or $40,000 machines. So we invested our own funds and we created a system whereby this farmers could, um, hire. It became very interesting. We got, um, noticed globally. The World Economic Forum in 2021 invited us into its, uh, Cyclers Accelerator program that we were admitted in 2022 for about six months.

[00:04:49] Ibrahim Maigari: It prepared us, our business model was really, uh, tweaked and they advised us to look, uh, outside Nigeria being the biggest market. We never thought of, I mean, expanding out, but the world economic forum secular accelerator program exposed us to understand that the problem is of Saharan African problem. So that was our took.

[00:05:11] Ibrahim Maigari: Was to expand late 2022 to Tanzania, and we started operations in Tanzania, January 2023. Um, yeah, by 2023, we also got an award at the Lib Technology Forum in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, because by then we’ve noticed that mechanization is not the only big problem. There are also Many challenges, which I’m sure we’re going to talk about.

[00:05:35] Ibrahim Maigari: And we developed the farm easy, uh, solution, which, uh, one, the technology for humanity award at the, uh, the lib technology of conference in the red in 2023, by late 2023 in October. We were also winners of the driving growth in tech and agriculture through technology award at the Nigeria innovation summit.

[00:05:53] Ibrahim Maigari: So this is, um, we’re currently in about five countries we are in Nigeria. Tanzania. We expanded to Rwanda this January, and we are also now present in Ghana through a partnership with an agri tech company there and also in Somaliland. So this is in brief our journey, and I’m glad to be here. Thank you.

[00:06:14] Sharon Idahosa: Thank you for sharing that.

[00:06:15] Sharon Idahosa: I mean, who would have thought that you are actually a lawyer by profession? It looks like we don’t actually try to go into agriculture. I mean, we just find ourselves in the ag space. Because I’ve spoken to a whole lot of stakeholders in this space who actually didn’t study agriculture, but at the end of the day, they found themselves here and now they love what they are doing.

[00:06:40] Sharon Idahosa: I mean, I really didn’t think that you are actually a lawyer. Oh my God. I didn’t think that. It’s really interesting. I mean, you’re dragging them gradually. You’re dragging them gradually. So tell me why agri tech. What is your inspiration behind your involvement in the ag tech? I know you were sharing something already, but maybe you can just take it, dive into it a little bit more.

[00:07:10] Sharon Idahosa: So we know what your inspiration is, why you got into agrotech. I mean, you could have gotten into something different. I mean, we have other areas in agriculture. So just share why, so if you are able to share and people can listen to this episode, more youth can see good reasons why they can still venture into agri tech because we need them here as well.

[00:07:33] Ibrahim Maigari: Sure. Yeah, sure. Sure. So, yeah, um, I’ve always been a solutions person, Sharon. I’ve always loved, uh, solving problems. And to me, technology is an enabler. When We started our journey technology wise. Um, uh, I got to see the role technology plays in solving problems globally in many instances in a lot of countries.

[00:07:56] Ibrahim Maigari: And, uh, in Africa, we have a lot of, uh, problems [00:08:00] that are local to our needs. And I saw, uh, early, very back then, early in that technology has a role to play in solving those problems. So an aggregate is it comes naturally because, um, I’m a big fan of our continent. I’m a big fan of the potentials of our continent and Uh, when I discovered that 65 percent of the uncultivated arable land of the world is in Africa, but we’re still, I mean, importing food, we’re still having severe hunger crisis, according to the UNFO, almost 400 million people are facing severe hunger, one in five Africans goes to bed hungry.

[00:08:38] Ibrahim Maigari: Hungry. So these are the sort of things that inspires me as, as an African, as a person that has been in the technology space to solve problems technologically. And that’s my inspiration. How do we now use technology as an enabler to make our people grow more food, to feed more people and solve problems of hunger, because, uh, Sharon, whether we like it or not, if you’re hungry, um, you won’t be able to see the potentials in the world.

[00:09:03] Ibrahim Maigari: So all this talk about the metaverse and, and of AI and whatever. Um, you can, you can, you can conceptualize, you can, you can create, there, there wouldn’t be that much creativity if people are hungry. So solving the hunger, making people produce more food to solve hunger is the first. I think it’s, uh, should be our foundation to unleash the potential of our, of our continent.

[00:09:27] Ibrahim Maigari: And that’s my inspiration. That is what I wake up every day thinking about doing. How do I make people Africans? Uh, food secure and that’s my passion and that’s what that’s been pushing us to be where we are at the moment and I think for a very long time it’s going to be the same. Yeah.

[00:09:46] Sharon Idahosa: Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

[00:09:47] Sharon Idahosa: I really agree with you on that. I mean, Africa has the capacity. We have al it takes to be food secure over there, we still import food. And it just, it just baffles me. I mean, it’s, it’s really disheartening. So if we can actually get technology connected with agriculture, that way I think we can get more young people to, to join the agriculture space.

[00:10:12] Sharon Idahosa: Because you know, so many of them are still concerned about going to the farms, carrying food and cutlasses. But if we can let them know that you can still rope in technology, Um, with agriculture, it would be a lot more easier for them to come up with innovative solutions that can still play a major role.

[00:10:29] Sharon Idahosa: Sure,

[00:10:29] Ibrahim Maigari: sure. Absolutely agree with you. Absolutely. And let me just chip in something here that you mentioned. Um, I think, uh, I honestly agree with you that technology has Big role to play in terms of attracting the younger generation. Um, you know, there’s this perception that aggregate is for the old generation.

[00:10:49] Ibrahim Maigari: It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s muscle power. It’s, it’s a tedious, uh, hoe and cutlass kind of situation that all people do in the villages, but I think technology now is attracting our young ones and they have a role to play and it makes it if I if I’m allowed to say this way, it makes agriculture look sexy.

[00:11:08] Ibrahim Maigari: Sort of. It makes it looks cool. Yeah. And I really like the fact that you highlighted that technology will attract them to make it. I mean, you could play in a lot of roles in the value chain and by by by scaling affordable technology, all the farmers. It’s really, it’s really an attraction to the younger generation.

[00:11:29] Ibrahim Maigari: I agree.

[00:11:30] Sharon Idahosa: Yes, it’s interesting to know that, um, during my, I mean, while interacting with some young people, um, many of them still struggle to know, to, to see that there are some areas that you can blend with agriculture. For example, A lot of people questioned me, um, while I was, um, training some young people in India and other African countries as well.

[00:11:56] Sharon Idahosa: So they were like, uh, I never knew that [00:12:00] agriculture and public relations can really coexist. So they just still believe that the farm, when you hear agriculture, you’re talking about farming. We are talking about going, carrying hoes and cutlasses. So not so much enlightened about what can really go wrong.

[00:12:19] Ibrahim Maigari: Agri-business.

[00:12:20] Sharon Idahosa: And agriculture just has, can really just blend with a whole lot of, whole lot of areas as well. So I think about this message about agri technology would really help them to see that yes, they can get involved regardless of whatever it is they studied. I just feel like there’s more opportunities, I mean, so creating awareness like this is really amazing and I’m glad that you also have a forefront.

[00:12:47] Ibrahim Maigari: And you guys are doing a great job. Like, like you rightly said, I mean, this is a whole industry. People will always, people have always been eating and people continue to be eating as long as we survive as a, as a race, as a, as a human race on this earth. People will always be eating and agriculture is, is the, is the gateway

[00:13:05] Ibrahim Maigari: for, for, for, for production of what we consume. So, so I mean, I mean, this is the, the oldest, uh, industry and it’s going to be the, the, the last one standing. I believe so because as we journey to the, the, the deal of judgment, definitely people will pick up something to eat on the way before we get there as well.

[00:13:24] Ibrahim Maigari: Yeah.

[00:13:29] Sharon Idahosa: We definitely eat, we all have a role in this. So the earlier we start getting involved, the better for everybody. So then there’s no role left for just one person. Everybody has a role to play. So yeah, well, well, I understand that your company developed an operating system to enhance productivity. And, um, efficiency of small scale farmers operation.

[00:13:50] Sharon Idahosa: So can you shed more light on this?

[00:13:52] Ibrahim Maigari: Yeah. So that was what I was saying. You know, when we started, we veered off early as a mechanization service platform, but in the course of our journey, I mean, working with smaller holder farmers for the past four years now, we discovered that, um, there are also some fundamental touch points, uh, pinpoints, uh, to be, to be solved.

[00:14:12] Ibrahim Maigari: And this came as a result of various, uh, research and. Brainstorming sessions in partnership with, uh, the World Economic Forum, uh, the, the Villars, uh, Institute in, in Switzerland. You know, if you, if you do a Google search, for instance, um, why is Africa hungry? You’ll see a lot of reasons from the COVID 19 pandemic to the Russian Ukraine war that disrupted the global supply of channel fertilizer, environmental issues, uh, uh, insecurity.

[00:14:45] Ibrahim Maigari: You know, and a whole lot. Um, so we did a deep dive, you know, through system thinking with our partners. And these are genuine reasons that I have mentioned, but we call them externalities because if there were, there was no COVID for instance, would a farmer in Northwestern Nigeria, let’s say in Kaduna state, if a maize farmer in Kaduna state, would that farmer be, uh, be producing, uh, uh, 10 tons of maize per hectare?

[00:15:14] Ibrahim Maigari: No. If there was no Russian crisis, if there was no insecurity, if there have been, let’s assume all those problems that I mentioned, environmental security are all non existent, would that farmer be able to produce at par with his counterpart in, let’s say, just close by here in Africa, let’s say Zimbabwe.

[00:15:31] Ibrahim Maigari: or Zambia. A farmer in Zambia does about 10 tons, nine to 10 tons per hectare for maize. While our farmers in Nigeria till date, I don’t think we’re up to the capacity of at best you do three tons. So we realize that the problem is not of externality. But it’s of internalities, it’s zeros down to under productivity of our smallholder farmers.

[00:15:53] Ibrahim Maigari: That’s the principal reason why Africa is still hungry. So when we deep dive into [00:16:00] why do our smallholder farmers underproduce? We came to realize, we come to, we came to discover the seven fundamental touch points that I, that I’m going to talk to you about, which, uh, it’s the basis of our coming up with our farm easy operating system.

[00:16:14] Ibrahim Maigari: The first one is access to land preparation, uh, equipment, and this goes down to not only preparing land, but testing the land, um, leveling the land, knowing whether this land is suitable for rice or maize or cashew or cassava or whatever. Having a very good Data centric approach to land preparation.

[00:16:36] Ibrahim Maigari: That’s number one. Most of our farmers prepare land manually. And, um, we also discovered that in the process of preparing land manually, the person that prepares land mechanically produces 50 percent more food than the one that does prepare land manually. And, and if you prepare land mechanically, you tend to use less seeds, less chemicals, less water, which also advances the cycler

[00:16:58] Ibrahim Maigari: Uh, economy. It makes it sustainable. It makes it, uh, climate smart to that extent. Just by land preparation, you get to produce 50 percent more food. That’s number one. Number two. We also discovered that over 80 percent of our farmers, uh, plant grains. not seeds. There’s a whole world of difference between planting grains and seeds.

[00:17:19] Ibrahim Maigari: Um, if you are in the village, you’ll see that farmers after harvesting, they will keep their produce, their grains, uh, as seeds for next year’s season. This is not the practice. It’s not the best practice because as you plant grains, your yield will be dropping. Um, we don’t have time to go into the science of, uh, seed production, but it’s, it’s worthy to note that that is a very big touch point that we discovered that providing access to these farmers, uh, will make them produce more number three is, uh, access to, uh, quality chemicals over 72 percent of the chemicals that farmers use smallholder farmers use are fake, adulterated, low quality at best.

[00:17:59] Ibrahim Maigari: So, um, and the relationship between weeds and, and, and crops, when you plant weeds, compete with your crop for nutrients. And, and, and, and, and if you don’t have the chemicals to kill those weeds off, uh, you, those up the nutrients that your crop requires to yield more. That’s number three. Number four is. On time delivery of affordable soil and crop specific fertilizer.

[00:18:21] Ibrahim Maigari: This is something that’s a, it’s not existent. Our farmers with all the government intervention program, if at best, they get, if they get fertilizer, they get fertilizer out of season. When they don’t even need fertilizer, for instance, right now farmers are preparing land between April to May if you don’t give them inputs, including fertilizer, and if it’s for instance, I mean, you’re just wasting your time.

[00:18:43] Ibrahim Maigari: By the time you get to the farmers, sometimes it’s around July or August, they are out of season already. So on time, liberal fertilizer, not just any type of fertilizer, soil specific and crop specific fertilizer. What do I mean? Why do I mean by soil specific? The fertilizer that you’re supposed to give in Sokoto is not supposed to be there’s fertilizer you’re supposed to use in Calabar or in Maiduguri or in Enugu because of the soil nature of that.

[00:19:07] Ibrahim Maigari: That’s why in the beginning, I talked to you about soil testing. Uh, and then most of our blending plants just do anyhow, and they just blend anyhow and they distribute anyhow. So lack of soil specific. Specific fertilization is also a very big problem for our farmers. And number five is based economic practices.

[00:19:25] Ibrahim Maigari: All this discussion that we’re having is based on experts that, uh, have research and that, uh, I mean, in Africa, most of South Africa. Our smallholder farmers will not have access to exchange from workers. Nobody tells them what to do. They’ve been using inherited knowledge from their forefathers. 200 years old technology or farming.

[00:19:45] Ibrahim Maigari: That’s what they’re using. So if they don’t have access to good, best agronomic practices, how do you expect them to know when to apply fertilizer, where to apply fertilizer, the type of fertilizers they need, where are they going to do their cropping and all those things. So knowledge is key. [00:20:00] That’s number five.

[00:20:00] Ibrahim Maigari: Number seven is mechanized harvesting. And unfortunately that’s what we’ve been doing. And it’s number is the sixth, uh, touch point. That the farm is the operating system is meant to address. Um, if you give this smallholder farmers from number one to number five, and then you allow them to harvest manually.

[00:20:17] Ibrahim Maigari: The waste that we encounter is massive. Let me give you an instance, a rice farm. One acre of rice farm takes about 30 people to work manually. Over 24 hours to harvest one acre. And the best they can get is about 24 bags of paddy. That same one acre, if you come up with a small harvester machine, it will take you 30 minutes to harvest one acre.

[00:20:38] Ibrahim Maigari: Uh, the, the, the, the calculations that we’ve done based on our analysis, one hectare of rice farm, um, harvested manually, you tend to lose about 2. 8 metric tons of, of grains. So that. That’s why in the last three years, our company in two countries, we’ve harvested a little bit about 5, 700 hectares and we’ve saved over 60 million kilogram of grain so far.

[00:21:00] Ibrahim Maigari: So you could see harvesting mechanical harvesting is a big, big, big, big contributor to food production. If we are serious about improving our food system. And of course the last one, which is the seventh one is access to a structured market. Most of our farmers go to farm without any data. They just go on farm because they’re doing subsistence farming.

[00:21:19] Ibrahim Maigari: They just go and plant whatever they, whatever it’s raining. For instance, if this year, uh, Soya is scarce and the price has gone up next year, everybody will go into Soya without any market research. And then without knowing that the price of Soya. would crash because there will be a lot of soya in the market.

[00:21:37] Ibrahim Maigari: And then they will tell you that, okay, soil has crashed. It is maize that’s expensive. It’s lucrative this year, the coming year, all of them will go into maize and the same thing will happen. So there’s no structured market or what we’ll see a guaranteed offtake that requires their produce. For instance, in developed countries, if Sharon is a farmer, you produce maize, a company will approach you right before you even cultivate that they need to take these tons of grains from you.

[00:22:02] Ibrahim Maigari: So you go to the market, you go to farm with data, you go to farm with an intention that, okay, this is what I’m going to produce before some of them even pay you before you even, um, plant. So this seven fundamental touch point is what the farm easy operating system. That you that our company designed to solve.

[00:22:19] Ibrahim Maigari: It is a technological stack that has three components. Now I’m talking about the farm easy operating system. I’ve given you the background that led us to develop the system so that the farm is operating system is a technological infrastructure that it’s not meant to be used by the farmer. Anyway, it is directed at farm, uh, agri companies, uh, developmental agencies that are working in the agri space, big corporate farmers, uh, government agencies.

[00:22:46] Ibrahim Maigari: As long as we are working with smallholder farmers, the farm easy operating system, it’s, it’s tailor made for you. The farmer is a beneficiary because we know in Africa, most of our smallholder farmers are not tech savvy. They don’t have smartphones. We don’t want to bore them that they should migrate. Uh, they should become technologically savvy before they, like I said, technology is an enabler.

[00:23:06] Ibrahim Maigari: So we designed the FarmEasy, we developed the FarmEasy operating system to, to serve, uh, to bring the enabling, uh, contribution to the, to the It is divided into three components. You have all the things that I mentioned to you. There’s what we call the optimization manual, that anybody that have access to the operating system will access the importance of all the seven touchpoints.

[00:23:26] Ibrahim Maigari: And then there’s a, there’s optimization software, which is comprises of a dashboard and a mobile app that helps you to monitor, to measure your farm, to create farm IDs, to do a whole lot of things. And of course, there’s also the farm easy GPS, which is a. Uh, tracking and equip and aggregate equipment tracking service that works.

[00:23:45] Ibrahim Maigari: It’s to limit for Africa that works in even in places without Internet or cellular network. So this is basically what the family’s operating system is all about. And it was what one of the hour that I was mentioning in Saudi. In, uh, [00:24:00] 2023, the Technology for Humanity Award. It’s what our company has been using internally for the past three years, but we decided in 2024 to open it up.

[00:24:07] Ibrahim Maigari: Uh, we cannot do this thing alone. And, uh, we’ve commercialized it now. And people that, uh, anybody that is in the tech, in the agri space that is working with smallholder farmers can subscribe to, uh, to the FarmEasy operating system and use. It’s basically an optimization tool. It’s made to optimize the productivity of farmers in Africa so that we can produce more food to feed our continent.

[00:24:27] Sharon Idahosa: Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, that is really detailed and I believe that it’s going to play a major role for our farmers. Um, in one of my episodes on sustainability, I spoke to the MD of SoulTree International, um, where she mentioned the intense labor that they have to go through, um, because of, um, the mechanization and stuff.

[00:24:51] Sharon Idahosa: Not enough mechanization, so they have to employ so much labor. Now, if they can actually, in terms of harvesting their cassava, so you know when it’s dry season, it’s very hard for them to, um, dig out the cassava, so because she’s into cassava and the rest. So, now, does this technology actually help to solve that kind of problem?

[00:25:15] Sharon Idahosa: I’m just trying to, to, to get it because what we were trying to do as a solution was to see how to put out a competition that can allow young people to develop such, um, things that can play a major role in helping them to, you know, um, harvest. So because we’re talking about people.

[00:25:35] Ibrahim Maigari: Yeah, I, I’ve seen, uh, a lot of videos of cassava harvesting and, uh, it’s quite tedious.

[00:25:41] Ibrahim Maigari: I mean, you could say that 1000 times. It’s a very level intensive stuff. So the whole point of, um, the pharmacy operating system is to provide access using technology, right? It’s to, it’s, it’s a, it’s like a platform that brings small holder farmers or operators with small holder farmers to the various stuff that I mentioned, for instance.

[00:26:00] Ibrahim Maigari: Um. If they subscribe to this kind of service, we’ll help them in terms of tractorization and land preparation and soil testing and stuff. And at the same time, towards the end of the season, you know, land preparation is the gateway, is the beginning. Harvesting is the ending. At the same time, towards the end of the season, what we currently do, we are not into harvesting cassava yet.

[00:26:22] Ibrahim Maigari: We do a lot of rice, wheat, and maize harvesting, because the technology is, you know, in existence, but we’ve seen with research, we’ve seen better ways. automated ways of harvesting cassava. And we’re also working on that. And, uh, it’s all about bringing access, helping them to know that there’s a technology that exists.

[00:26:42] Ibrahim Maigari: If even if we cannot provide it as a company, that’s the whole point of the families operating system is to give them access to where they could get those services. And I’m telling you, I’ve seen with research on that, we’ve seen. semi automated way of harvesting cassava. That’s much, much more faster than what they’re doing currently.

[00:26:59] Ibrahim Maigari: Yeah. We could be of help to them. Not like we’re doing to rice or wheat farmers because rice and wheat are of different, uh, demand. It’s just caught trash clean and back than cassava. It’s about uprooting it, digging it into the soil and, and, and stretching it out. It’s a little bit tedious, but where, uh, I can assure you it’s, it’s, it’s doable.

[00:27:23] Sharon Idahosa: Well, definitely, I will see how to make the connections. So maybe, um, to explore partnership in that regard. Hopefully, it will work a lot more easier. But just briefly, as we round up, in what ways do you see technology transforming the future of agriculture on the continent, particularly improving food security and sustainability?

[00:27:45] Ibrahim Maigari: I’m a big fan of, uh, technology in Africa and I see it as a game changer. Um, but just, uh, I always tell the younger ones that we need to, uh, develop and customize our technological solutions to fit our continent. [00:28:00] Um, I’ve seen a lot of. Um, what we call Bluetooth, uh, aggregate companies that sit down in the confines of their offices in big cities and come up with solutions that are not tailor made for our smallholder farmers.

[00:28:11] Ibrahim Maigari: I will advise them to move a little bit closer to have granular, uh, details of what they’re doing. So whatever we’re going to do in terms of technology, it should be, uh, customizable. It should be affordable. And it’s, it’s a big game changer. It’s a game changer. It was self like this thing that you go, the, the, the, the, the, uh, cassava harvesting that you just mentioned.

[00:28:32] Ibrahim Maigari: And we produce a lot of cassava and as long as we, we want to improve their productivity, we have to solve this issue of, of, of, of harvesting cassava. So technology is a big player in the agric space in Africa. And I believe, uh, as long as we get it right, it’s going to change the full of our continent.

[00:28:51] Sharon Idahosa: Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on that. I really appreciate what you’re doing in this space and I hope that we can drag in more young people to get involved in agriculture and technology. So we have come to the end of today’s episode. I really hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you learned something from this episode because this is home for agriculture.

[00:29:14] Sharon Idahosa: Build, learn, grow, And collaborate. So thank you so much once again for joining this show. I am looking forward to it’s a pleasure to have you here. So guys, we’ve come to the end once again. Yes. I’m looking forward to it. Looking forward to it myself. Thank you so much once again. Do well to subscribe to this podcast.

[00:29:38] Sharon Idahosa: Let’s talk agriculture. We are on Spotify, we’re on Apple, we’re on Google, Deezer, Alexa, I think, yeah. So yes, we are very much available on all platforms. And of course you can find our episodes directly on our website. So do well to check it out, subscribe, and let me know what you think. If you have a particular topic in mind, please do well to reach out to us.

[00:29:58] Sharon Idahosa: Cheers.

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