Vision will not feed your children Part 3- The Fellowship

In 2022 the opportunity to apply for a Professional Fellowship in Agribusiness came up and is always the case I shared the information with others and you guessed right. Initially my thoughts were “I am not academically qualified in Agriculture, this isn’t for me” and I ignored it. My boss made me do it, it was part of the work plan that I submitted weekly. Her advice- tell your story. I didn’t think I had a chance.

I got called for an interview, I thought they just wanted to increase numbers. I remember stating three times in that interview that I wasn’t qualified for the work that I did. Then came the acceptance letter, in my head haaa I must be on the waiting list because they didn’t get that many applicants. It was a year between acceptance and beginning the travel arrangements and all. Again the importance of having a tribe with the right people, the Harambe Trust team had more faith than I did.

 

5 May 2023 I boarded a plane for the first time for the trip to Michigan State University, Lansing Michigan in the United States of America as part of the Spring cohort of 3 Zimbabweans and 9 participants from Rwanda, South Africa and Zambia. It was the first time I had crossed the borders of Zimbabwe even though I had acquired a passport 8 years prior to this trip. We were hosted by the Alliance for African Partnerships from Michigan State University, United States Department of State and World Learning Centre. We were in the United States for 5 weeks during which we interacted with small scale farmers, experienced different facets of agriculture and agribusiness, business for social impact, business for profit and generally had fun. (A more detailed version of who we met and lessons learned are articles still to come) I realised I was good at what I did, the question was “what did I do?”.

 

I felt a sense of responsibility to not only pass on what I had learned but to be the best version of myself that I could be, in order to encourage the women who have gone in to agriculture for survival and/or for the love of the land, for the child who doesn’t want to go into farming because its hard and dirty work, for the farmer  who is growing in terms of production, productivity but still things aren’t going well and  for the agripreneur who wants to quit because work has become so toxic its affecting their physical health.

I finally understood this chapter of my life,my vision for Africa is self-sustaining communities with food and nutrition security at household level. And  whilst I loved the production side of things I wasn’t too keen to spend all my days in the field. My dream was the Agricultural Leadership Academy, a place to nurture leaders in agriculture. The aim is to strengthen the capacity of transformational agri-preneurs in the agri-food system, enabling them to stay in business for longer and grow at a sustainable pace within an ecosystem they can leverage to their advantage. It combines Production, Leadership and Enterprise Management capacity building through facilitated training, coaching and mentorship of current and future agripreneurs.

 

What do I do? Transform Mindsets 

How? By equipping leaders and developing growth focused agribusinesses.

I am a Leadership and Agri-Business Development facilitator ,working with growth focused Agri-preneurs. I am a perpetual student of Leadership, Business and Agriculture.