![]() | This article reads like a press release or a news article and may be largely based on routine coverage .(November 2021) |
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Company type | Social enterprise |
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Industry | Agriculture |
Founded | 2012 |
Founder | Kola Masha, Lola Masha |
Headquarters | Nigeria |
Website | www.babbangona.com |
Babban Gona, which means "Great Farm" in the Hausa language, is a social enterprise organization that provides support for smallholder farmers in Nigeria to become more profitable. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Babban Gona is partly owned by the farmers it serves. [7] [8]
Babban Gona was founded in 2012 by Kola Masha with the aim of promoting agriculture and reducing unemployment in Nigeria. [1] [9] Kola temporarily relocated to a small village in the Northern part of Nigeria, which had been recently impacted by insurgent activities. [9]
At inception, Babban Gona started and provide support for 100 members in Kaduna State, Nigeria. [10] Babban Gona currently has its operations in 15 states namely; Abuja, Adamawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Bauchi, Plateau and Jigawa states. [11] The company has provided support for over 110,000 smallholder farmers since its inception. [12] [13]
In April 2017, Babban Gona became the first Social Enterprise to win Skoll Foundation Awards. [14] [15] [16] In 2017, Babban Gona received a $2.5m investment from the Global Innovation Fund. [17]
To catalyse capital and fund the company’s expansion in order to tackle multiple constraints in smallholder farming with promising increases to farmer net incomes in an extremely poor region of Nigeria. [18]
Babban Gona four key services to drive success for smallholder farmers: [6] [19]
Babban Gona provides support for smallholder farmers through what the company calls "Trust Groups", grassroots level farmer cooperatives. [20] A group of 3-5 smallholder farmer members, [7] [21] with a trust group leader assigned to each group, who is selected after passing agronomic knowledge test and oral leadership interview. [21] After a trust group is established, members of each trust group are trained on the following - agronomy, financial literacy, business skills and leadership through the BG Farm university platform. [22] Babban Gona members have a loan repayment rate estimated to be at about 98%. [21] Other trust group members are responsible for repaying if a trust group member defaults. [21]