Sandosham visited Africa as the first stop on a global tour of the nonprofit development organization’s operations, which will also include visits to regional teams in Asia and the Americas.

She met the Africa team members at the regional headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria, which gave her an opportunity to share her vision and her excitement for the work Heifer Africa is doing in the region.

While visiting the country, she met with some of Heifer’s young agritech innovation partners and other key stakeholders in Nigeria, reaffirming Heifer’s commitment to work with youth and innovate to transform Africa’s food systems, as well as working alongside smallholder farmers, producers, cooperatives and others to ensure sustainable agricultural interventions.

While addressing stakeholders, Sandosham said, “Heifer believes that smallholder farmers hold the key to transforming Africa’s food insecurity.

With food importation across Africa averaging over USD 43 billion annually, we believe that access to finance, access to innovation, access to infrastructure, and access to training, can increase food production and strengthen local food systems, reducing vulnerability to climate shocks and long-term dependency on imports”.

As part of her trip to Africa, Sandosham also visited Heifer’s country operations in Rwanda. She met with the Rwandan minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources ((MINAGRI), Dr. Geraldine Mukeshimana, development partners, and other key stakeholders to discuss the progress of Heifer Rwanda partner projects and explore other potential collaborations in the country.

“It has been a pleasure visiting Heifer’s country operation in Rwanda, meeting with the regional team and other key stakeholder partners in our mission to end hunger and poverty in Africa,” said Sandosham.

“For the last 48 years, Heifer has been in Africa working with both government and development partners to enable smallholder farmers and farming communities to build successful businesses, drive self-reliance and improve their living income.

It was inspiring to see that the passion to make this a reality is palpable across the Heifer Africa region and our partners. Through the Heifer programs currently running in Africa, it is clear that we remain resolute in our mission to uplift smallholder farmers and their communities out of poverty.”

Speaking on the CEO’s visit to the region, Heifer International Senior Vice President for Africa Programs Adesuwa Ifedi said, “Having the CEO visit the region and meet our partners and key stakeholders, was critical to restate our position that for Africa’s food systems to thrive, the combination of interventions and partnerships at all levels is needed.

Our strategic goal as a region over the next 8 years is to assist more than 6 million farmers to reach a sustainable living income by 2030, through strategic private and public sector partnerships to reach a transformational scale.

We remain unwavering in our mission and work to build resilience in agriculture because it remains a critical sector for Africa’s food security, workforce and economy to flourish”.

Announcing the winners in Lagos on Wednesday, November 30 at the Grand Finale of the keenly contested Challenge that saw well over 600 entries, the Country Director, Rufus Idris said the newly introduced annual challenge in Nigeria serves as a springboard for identifying outstanding young agritech innovators, as well as assisting in the formation of strong partnerships.

As a result, the competition will increase visibility for growth and improve smallholder farmers’ productivity.

Ifeoluwa Olatayo, the Managing Director, Soupah Farm-en-Market Limited emerged the grand prize winner for the maiden edition of AYuTe ‘s competition in Nigeria having met all requirements to get the topmost position. She got $10,000 grants as the overall best at the conclusion of Heifer Africa AYuTe’s Challenge to expand her business initiatives in the agriculture value chain.

The second runner’s -up, Rejoice Usim, the Chief Executive of Simkay Foods Limited got $6,000, while Stephen Obe, the CEO of Evet Technology got $4,000 grants to emerge the third place winner.

The winner, Olatayo described the impact of her innovation at Soupah Farm-en-Market Limited thus: “Basically, we connect rural smallholder farmers to urban markets by using short code as a procurement interface. So, rural smallholder farmers will no longer market agriculture produce through middlemen – they will communicate with us directly to collect their produce while we sell to large off takers. Majorly, we are improving the livelihood of the smaller farmers because we buy their farm produce at better prices of about 50% higher than the typical traditional markets”.

She urged youths to engage and think of how to use technology to better the lots of young farmers and boost food production and supply. “I encourage other youth techies to look for those problems within the agriculture industry and solve them with the use of technology to scale faster and grow bigger”,

“The grant will majorly be a benefit to our local farmers. It will also create a supply chain system for them in terms of purchase, storage and selling in a way that it makes them make higher profits than they are making at the moment” she said.

The national competition represents a new phase of Heifer International’s AYuTe Africa Challenge, established in 2021 to award cash grants annually to the most promising young agritech innovators from across Africa. Like the Regional Champions competition, the AYuTe National Champions competition offers prize money and mentorship, helping translate the energy and ideas of young Nigerian agritech innovators into meaningful impact for smallholder farmers across the country, and supporting winners to grow their businesses and profile.

“More than half of our population consists of young people and with inflation skyrocketing, fueled mainly by food inflation, we’ll need the youths with energy, tech-savvy, and entrepreneurial skills that can be channeled to transform the agricultural sector,” said Rufus Idris, Country Director, Heifer Nigeria.

Presenting the awards and the grant to the finalists, Heifer Nigeria’s Country Director, Rufus Idris, said that “We are excited to announce a starting cash grant of $20,000 to the most promising young agritech innovator in Nigeria. This is in line with Heifer’s strategic goal of unleashing the hidden agricultural treasures among African youths.

“We strongly believe that the new ideas and technologies by this Africa’s tech-savvy youths discovered in this competition will help to convert the huge potential in agriculture to economic growth and employment across Africa while transforming the sector.

“Through this challenge, we hope to further inspire the Nigerian youth population to continue to embrace agriculture as a career option of choice, while promoting creative professionals that are using technology to re-imagine farming and food production across the country”, said Idris at the close of the competition.

Since 1944, Heifer International has worked with more than 39 million people around the world to end hunger and poverty in a sustainable way. Working with rural communities in 21 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, Heifer International supports farmers and local food producers to strengthen local economies and build secure livelihoods that provide a living income.

The event brought together stakeholders within the ecosystem including government representatives, tech hubs and agripreneurs, who are relevant to supporting the development and scale-up of innovative, commercially viable and sustainable agricultural technologies, capable of transforming Nigeria’s agricultural sector and her food security.

The keynote speaker and Lagos State Commissioner for Agriculture, Ms .Abiola Olusanya who was represented by the Director of Agriculture Training Institute, Mr Emmanuel Fatai Audu, said that “At every point in time, there is always a demand for food in Lagos State. Food worth N9 billion is consumed every day. If we can expand that across Nigeria and Africa, that tells you the immense potential that the food value chain brings to the table in terms of economic gains to value chain outburst, especially our youths here today. He encouraged the youths to go into Agriculture as it is the next oil.