As a Development and International Relations student I was very excited when I was given an internship placement at Momentum Agribusiness and Development (MAD). In class I have been presented to various theoretical arguments for and against traditional development aid, I have read thousands of pages on the subject and written many assignments. All which unmistakably have made me wiser. The knowledge I obtained lead me to be critical towards traditional development aid and its ability to bring sustainable change. However, all I had to substantiate my thoughts and my criticism was, well honestly, a lot of books. Something was missing: experiences from real life. MAD is a social business. They do not do traditional development aid. They do not do hand-outs. They do business. Social business. This was what attracted me the most. I wanted to learn firsthand what it means to run a business in a developing country, with the aim of making a profit, together with creating sustainable development.

GOODBYE DENMARK!

When I was packing my bags in January 2014, for my 4 months internship, my head was spinning. I had no idea what to expect. I was hoping that MAD would show me that social business is indeed the way forward when creating sustainable development. Also, I was over-the-top exited about living in such a different culture. My first couple of weeks was ‘introduction weeks’. I visited many Momentum Farmers and they gave me such a warm welcome. When I watched the local Momentum Staff train the Momentum Farmers it was obvious that they were doing an amazing job. The farmers were listening to every word, laughing and asking questions.

MY WORK

My position was as a Business Development Intern and one of my major tasks was planning and executing expansions to five new areas in Siaya. This meant that I helped introduce the work of MAD in different villages and mobilize new Momentum Farmers. We would walk around the different villages, from one boma (homestead) to the other, talking with the farmers and inviting them to meet us at their local meeting place. Many farmers were interested, and from the areas I worked with we were able to sign more than 400 new Momentum Farmers.

I am very proud to have been a part of this achievement because it means that hundreds of people will be given business and farming training as well as quality inputs on loan. This will have a very direct effect on their food security. They will be able to harvest more bags of maize and sorghum, which will feed their families throughout the year. It is crucial for these small-scale farmers to harvest enough bags for both own consumption and selling so they can make enough money for school fees, medicine and keeping their families feed and happy.

One of my other tasks was interviewing the farmers on their experiences with being Momentum Farmers. This was such a rewarding experience. The farmers were explaining how they were getting much more out of their land by using the farming techniques MAD was providing and how they saw themselves practicing better business in the future. Celine Odhiambo, one of our oldest farmers, told me that she had been doing farming her whole life and seen her harvest fail so many times. She had decided to join MAD because, in her own words, “you are never too old to learn”. And what Momentum taught her she will pass on to her grandchildren – I would definitely call that sustainability.

MY THOUGHTS

This internship experience has definitely provided me with what I was missing: experiences from real life. MAD has convinced me that social business IS a great way of creating sustainable development. I am thankful for this experience and know I will take everything I learned with me. I was in Siaya for a short period of only 4 months in which I saw MAD empower so many farmers. I cannot wait to see how many farmers they will have empowered in 4 years! I am now in Denmark writing my thesis based on my experiences and doing some volunteer work for MAD as well. I am already missing the great people I got to work with and the Momentum farmers and I am sure that I will be going to Siaya again one day!

Asante/Thanks

Lea Langeland Jensen

This Is Africa…. At least when leasing land.

As Momentum is a social, for-profit organization, we are always looking for ways to generate income without affecting the smallholder farmers we work with – basically, our vision is to become financially sustainable through income-generating projects while offering loans that the farmers not only can afford to repay, but which also leave the farmers with the highest possible disposable income.

We have discussed many income-generating activities but keep coming back to one, rabbit farming. It is a fairly young industry in Kenya but it is growing fast due to a high demand for rabbit meat from the many Asian nationals both in Kenya and abroad. Due to the continuous breeding, rabbits give birth 5 – 6 times a year, meaning that if we start with 10 female rabbits, within one year we could have 500-600! These are staggering numbers! Furthermore, rabbits are fairly easy to manage, the cost of feeds is low and space requirements are limited. But the latter is exactly where we are running into unforeseen problems.

We live in a rural market close to a river and would like to lease at least 1 acre of land within a 10 minute walk from the office and with direct access to the river. There is plenty of fallow land around so finding land is not an issue – ownership, however is! The first plot of land we surveyed was a beautiful 5-acre piece, 5 minutes from the office, access to the river, located right next to a big road and already cleared for bushes and shrubs. After seeing it there was no doubt. This was the land! But something made me feel weary about the owner. He was a little too eager. So, I contacted the sub-chief, the village elder and the Momentum Farmer group leader from that village. They informed me that the man was not really the owner. When his father died many years back, he had left all of his land to his sons – three in total. He had divided the plot and given pieces to every son. But when he died, the person who claims to be the owner, sold all of his father’s cattle at a lower-than-market price without consulting with his brothers, and he spent all of the money on himself. This prompted his brothers to boycott him from owning any of the land their father had left.

When people inherit land in Kenya, the title deed is usually never altered. It is still in the dead person’s name and the new division is never documented. Therefore, anybody with the title deed can pretend to own the whole land. This is common knowledge here so when leasing land people prefer to deal with a plot with only one owner and involve the village elder and sub-chief for verification purposes. Which is what we will do as well!

By Lisa Wer Nielsen

When I look around our sub-location I see a change happening. According to the farmers the change is happening because of us. When I heard that I was flabbergasted! How can we have been part of making a change when we have only been here for 3 months????

The explanation is simple: the area is ready for change. They have never had a reason to change before, but now they feel the momentum we are creating and they want to reap the benefits 100%. How they do that? Here is how:

We have come in with a project that teaches the farmers about farming skills and business skills, and that gives them farm inputs for a cash crop and a food crop on credit. This means we have dropped a stone in the water of change.

Now the farmers have realized that the stone either falls to the water bed without a splash or it can create a tidal wave, it all depends on the type of throw. And, that is up to the farmers! We have set very few requirements for how they should organize themselves as we do not want to overload the farmers given that our project is novel enough in itself. This means the farmers have a big role in shaping the output of this project.

This approach has resulted in a tremendous ripple effect:

Farmers have introduced table banking, which is a type of savings and loans process where farmers bring money to every meeting and put it in a pile. Some groups are choosing to use the pile of money for saving to repay the loan to us later, and others use it as a loan for group members who need to pay for school fees, lease extra land, start-up capital, etc.

Farmers have also made their own rules for coming late, not showing up to meetings, and not participating. Some have even already decided how to handle group members who are not working hard. These rules include fines, taking over other members’ shambas and dropping members.

Last but definitely not least, two groups have started an infrastructure advancement project that includes their whole village! They believe that now when they are Momentum Farmers they should also be proud of how they live, and the small walking paths to their individual houses and shambas are not suited for this new life, according to them. So, they have mobilized everybody in the village and they are now out there using their jembes (local spades), digging up the shrubs and weeds to expand the paths so that they are big enough to carry vehicles.

These are the ripples after just 3 months. I wonder what will happen in the next 3 months!

– this little girl said. She is about 12 years old and has been taught a poem about guys and their manipulative ways: First they say hi to you, then they want to be your friend, and then suddenly you find yourself with a big tummy and a life-threatening diease, which the guy is already giving to the next girl.

HIV/AIDS is a huge problem in our area of Kenya. It is estimated that at least 20% live with the disease. It is often contracted when people are very young due to a lack of use of protection.

It is a terrible disease with an almost equally terrible stigma surrounding it. You are not allowed to tell other people if a person has HIV or AIDS – that can actually send you to prison! Due to this stigma, it is extremely difficult to talk about it. But seeing that Momentum works with young people in our farmer groups, it is our responsibility to address the issue.

We will emphasize the importance of protection, of always demanding that the male partner wears a condom and that both parties are tested before intercourse. We want to do this by conducting trainings at every one of our farming sessions. We don’t want to just create an awareness campaign, we want to change their mindsets. We need them to see the kind of life they will have with the disease, and the kind of life they can have without. As we will be teaching them farming techniques that have a very high probability of increasing their farm output and also business skills that will teach them how to facilitate this increase in a financially lucrative way, one argument we will put forth is the lower financial gain due to lower productivity. Lower productivity due to being sick, will impact their output and their capability to invest in something productive. Though this might seem like a cold way of portraying a disease like this, we think it will ressonate well with this generation.The current awareness campaigns only focus on the emotionel and health aspect, but this doesn’t seem to really hit them. However, many young people are concerned with how their lives will be in the future with regards to family and wealth, so focusing on the financial issue of the disease might be a way for them to understand. We will try it, and if it doesn’t change anything, we will alter our strategy, because our main goal is to make a change – no matter if that means varying our approach several times!

– I hope the girls follows her own advice, and stays safe!

I am sitting at the local bakery in Siaya town – my favorite shop in the whole county – and thinking back on an interesting week.

We officially launched our project which was a huge success. Momentum farmers, influential politicians and friends of Momentum all showed up – a total of 65! We had arranged for the event to take place outside underneath a tent and we had hired a band to play local music. Seeing that we were outside, the whole village was there and at the end of the event, Christian couldn’t control himself any longer, he had to go dance with the village kids. There was so much joy and excitement! Our team held a captivating speech that hit on all of our achievements so far and the results to come. Afterwards, some of the local politicians took the floor.We networked and spoke to journalists that had come from the radio and newspaper. The success of the event has traveled, as I am met by people all over the county who have heard about it. Just 5 mins back while entering the bakery, I met a camera man I had met some weeks back and he was congratulating us on what he heard was an amazing start. Amazing!

This week also contained a trip to the most successful rabbit farm in the county – a man with the entrepreneurial ambition to venture into something very new. He had started as part of a group but one by one all the members had left and he is now the only one still keeping rabbits. He has 70 and is looking for a place to sell them. That is what we will help him with. We are also interested in keeping rabbits so once we identify a proper sales channel we will partner with him and sell together. We have already done some market research and found that there indeed is a commercial market for rabbit meat, especially with hotels and larger supermarkets.

It dawned on me this week, that there are no advertisements or commercials anywhere to remind me that Christmas is right around the corner. If it wasn’t for the calendar telling me, I wouldn’t know Christmas is in 1 month! I never thought about it, but it is extremely liberating not being bombarded by ads all the time. I can make my own decisions and I am not swallowed up by the consumption-hype of the holidays. It is fabulous! An unexpected benefit to living in rural Kenya!

Being in a foreign place, a girl’s gotta have some protection. Thank goodness, I have my team of monstrous animals! Rafiki provides the terrifying barking that scares away all the intruders, Missy takes care of the monster rats with her vicious claws, and MoMo has the many insects and lizards running off as she walks around the compound with swagger. If this wasn’t a public, a professional, blog I would definitely have uploaded the nasty pictures of their prey, which as of now has included a lion, an antelope and a wild boar. Next time it will be a mighty elephant as I am teaching them to hunt as a group, following the Momentum guidelines for a productive and efficient stratey to a better and bigger outcome!

Please note: This is meant as a joke. No animals have been hurt by our pets.

On Thursday, Momentum Business & Development signed up its first farmer groups! We got a total of 6 groups with a mix of farmers and youth. All groups still have to add a second person from their homestead and some still need to pay the first membership installment fee. Deadline for registration is this coming Thursday, which means that in just two days we will know exactly who we will be working with for the first planting season starting in February 2014!

It is so exciting seeing people’s enthusiasm! When we arrived at the meeting, there were no more than 25 people, and after waiting for an hour, the group had only grown to about 45 participants. That unnerved me! But we went ahead with our presentation, answered all the questions people asked the week before and also took new questions. After that was when it happened – suddenly people started gathering in small groups, money was changing hands and there was a lot of talking. After a little while people came up to us with lists of people in their groups, their contact information and the first membership fee installment. If that isn’t being proactive and being willing, I don’t know what is!

So, with this amazing start, it is no wonder that I am feeling positive. We have been met with open arms everywhere we go – from government, to local businessmen and farmers. I think the reason is because we have taken the time to meet, talk and listen to people. We have also come with an open mind and with a notion of learning from the people who know the best – the locals. It has been and still is a tremendous learning experience for and my team, and I can’t wait to start the farming and business training in late November and get to know our groups better!