Addressing Africa’s food paradox one young person at a time

Please allow me to just join you there.

So this country without a startup fund, would you be speaking about South Africa in particular? Has that been your experience or other countries that you have, um, dealt with on the continent as well?

I think, uh, uh, our experience in South Africa has been that, uh, the funds that are there, business as usual funds, and they don't take into account that, uh, the people we are dealing with, uh, uh, have just come from school.

They don't have collateral.

They don't have, uh, history in, in business.

And so you cannot use business as usual funding, uh, to fund them because, uh, you cannot assess them using the business as usual funding.

There should be a specialized p- Funding for startups, understanding that, uh, these guys are just starting now.

Uh, they won't have everything that you need in the business as usual type of funding.

I think there's, um, a bank in South Africa that recently went into partnership with the African Development Bank, if I'm not ...

A commercial bank and the African Development Bank, if I'm not mistaken, that has announced something of the kind to sort of plug the gap for, um, small businesses in particular.

But just going back to the work that EARN does, so when you speak of infrastructure that you actually have where these young people can come in and there's also an exit plan, uh, talk us through the Grootvlei Climate-Smart Horticulture Centre, as well as the Bambi Climate-Smart Agriculture Hub in Zambia.

So Grootvlei being in South Africa and Bambi in Zanzibar.

So, uh, talk us through, um, the two projects.

So what we've done is that, uh, we have, uh, first of all, uh, at the same time Centurion we've got a proven model now, and we have created an ecosystem of our subsidiaries.

So we got the two in agriculture, one commercial, uh, one, uh, uh, training.

The commercial one, we use it for aggregating, uh, the produce from young people, but we also use that to, uh, for transition.

So when they finish the program, they spend about a year or two on our own facilities for them to, to practice in real, in the wor- real world to get history both the, with the funders and the, and the market.

And so we have taken all that now and we are putting that into hubs.

So the first hub that we have is the Grootvlei, uh, hub, where we've got a one zero point five, uh, high-tech greenhouse there that has been funded by the, the Dutch government through, uh, uh, the, uh, Netherlands Enterprise, uh, Agency, RVO and Eskom.

And we are going to put in extra funds to build the rest of the site.

We've got 20 hectares there, and we want to make it as a commercial hub, um, both for training and for transitioning young people.

We are doing the same thing in Zanzibar, where we were invited by the government there, and they have given us 70 hectares of, of land.

We have already registered, and we've employed the country manager, and we are beginning to start the, uh, uh, operations there.

And the model is exactly what we are doing in South Africa because we are looking at Africans, uh, uh, in general.

And, and so we want to work with like minds to, uh, share the model that we have currently, that we have seen it's working-

Please allow me to just join you there.

So this country without a startup fund, would you be speaking about South Africa in particular? Has that been your experience or other countries that you have, um, dealt with on the continent as well?

I think, uh, uh, our experience in South Africa has been that, uh, the funds that are there, business as usual funds, and they don't take into account that, uh, the people we are dealing with, uh, uh, have just come from school.

They don't have collateral.

They don't have, uh, history in, in business.

And so you cannot use business as usual funding, uh, to fund them because, uh, you cannot assess them using the business as usual funding.

There should be a specialized p- Funding for startups, understanding that, uh, these guys are just starting now.

Uh, they won't have everything that you need in the business as usual type of funding.

I think there's, um, a bank in South Africa that recently went into partnership with the African Development Bank, if I'm not ...

A commercial bank and the African Development Bank, if I'm not mistaken, that has announced something of the kind to sort of plug the gap for, um, small businesses in particular.

But just going back to the work that EARN does, so when you speak of infrastructure that you actually have where these young people can come in and there's also an exit plan, uh, talk us through the Grootvlei Climate-Smart Horticulture Centre, as well as the Bambi Climate-Smart Agriculture Hub in Zambia.

So Grootvlei being in South Africa and Bambi in Zanzibar.

So, uh, talk us through, um, the two projects.

So what we've done is that, uh, we have, uh, first of all, uh, at the same time Centurion we've got a proven model now, and we have created an ecosystem of our subsidiaries.

So we got the two in agriculture, one commercial, uh, one, uh, uh, training.

The commercial one, we use it for aggregating, uh, the produce from young people, but we also use that to, uh, for transition.

So when they finish the program, they spend about a year or two on our own facilities for them to, to practice in real, in the wor- real world to get history both the, with the funders and the, and the market.

And so we have taken all that now and we are putting that into hubs.

So the first hub that we have is the Grootvlei, uh, hub, where we've got a one zero point five, uh, high-tech greenhouse there that has been funded by the, the Dutch government through, uh, uh, the, uh, Netherlands Enterprise, uh, Agency, RVO and Eskom.

And we are going to put in extra funds to build the rest of the site.

We've got 20 hectares there, and we want to make it as a commercial hub, um, both for training and for transitioning young people.

We are doing the same thing in Zanzibar, where we were invited by the government there, and they have given us 70 hectares of, of land.

We have already registered, and we've employed the country manager, and we are beginning to start the, uh, uh, operations there.

And the model is exactly what we are doing in South Africa because we are looking at Africans, uh, uh, in general.

And, and so we want to work with like minds to, uh, share the model that we have currently, that we have seen it's working-