Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu

Last updated

Nnaemeka Chidiebere Ikegwuonu [1] (born 1981 or 1982) is a Nigerian entrepreneur and radio broadcaster. He founded the Smallholders Foundation, which informs on sustainable farming through a radio station, and is CEO of ColdHubs, which rents solar-powered cold storage to food producers. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Ikegwuonu is from a farming family in Imo State, Nigeria. [3] [4] [5] He earned a bachelor's degree in history and international studies from Imo State University and, in 2009, a master's degree in cooperation and development from the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Pavia, in Italy. [5] [6] He also holds certificates in subjects including water resources management, poverty and human rights, and environmental education from various European universities. [6]

Career

After finishing school, Ikegwuonu worked for an NGO dealing with HIV among farmers. [7] In 2003, when he was 21, he founded the Smallholders Foundation, to provide information to farmers on sustainable practices; [5] [7] [8] [9] he later added an interactive radio show, [10] with farmers using solar-powered handsets with a Wi-Fi connection to communicate with the broadcasters. [11] By 2010 it had approximately 250,000 listeners a day. [7] [12]

In 2012, Ikegwuonu travelled to Dresden, where he met with scientists to discuss a cold storage system they had designed. [4] After initial implementation in 2014 of food coolers based on their design at markets, [4] in 2015 he launched ColdHubs, a company that rents solar-powered chilled storage space to farmers and fishers, reducing food waste and increasing their profits. [3] [8] [13] [14]

He has also designed a trolley that prolongs the shelf life of cassava. [15] In 2018 he became a Biodiversity fellow of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science at the University of Oxford, England. [6]

Awards

Ikegwuonu became an Ashoka fellow in 2008. [11] [16] He also received the Rolex Award in 2010, [3] [5] [7] [11] [15] the WISE Award in 2010, [12] and the Yara Prize for Green Revolution in Africa. [15]

Related Research Articles

Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce the use of Earth's natural resources by an individual or society. Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ecological footprint by altering their home designs and methods of transportation, energy consumption and diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology. The practice and general philosophy of ecological living closely follows the overall principles of sustainable development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subsistence agriculture</span> Farming to meet basic needs

Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices. Tony Waters, a professor of sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smallholding</span> Small farm, often for a single family

A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology, involvement of family in labor and economic impact. Smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent, smallholdings may not be self-sufficient, but may be valued for the rural lifestyle. As the sustainable food and local food movements grow in affluent countries, some of these smallholdings are gaining increased economic viability. There are an estimated 500 million smallholder farms in developing countries of the world alone, supporting almost two billion people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pot-in-pot refrigerator</span> Non-electric method of refrigeration

A pot-in-pot refrigerator, clay pot cooler or zeer is an evaporative cooling refrigeration device which does not use electricity. It uses a porous outer clay pot containing an inner pot within which the food is placed. The evaporation of the outer liquid draws heat from the inner pot. The device can cool any substance, and requires only a flow of relatively dry air and a source of water.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rolex Awards for Enterprise</span>

Since 1976, through the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, Rolex has supported exceptional individuals who have the courage and conviction to take on major challenges; men and women who have a spirit of enterprise, initiating extraordinary projects that make the world a better place. Each winner receives 100,000 Swiss francs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in Nigeria</span> Overview of agriculture in Nigeria

Agriculture is a sector of the Nigerian economy, accounting for up to 35% of total employment in 2020. According to the FAO, agriculture remains the foundation of the Nigerian economy, providing livelihoods for most Nigerians and generating millions of jobs. Along with crude oil, Nigeria relies on the agricultural products it exports to generate most of its national revenue. The agricultural sector in Nigeria comprises four sub-sectors: crop production, livestock, forestry, and fishing.

Paul Rice is the Founder & CEO of Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America. Since launching Fair Trade USA in 1998, Rice has brought Fair Trade into the mainstream and built a movement to expand its impact. He has challenged and collaborated with hundreds of companies to rework their global supply chains to obtain high-quality products that support community development and environmental protection.

One Acre Fund is a social enterprise that supplies smallholder farmers in East Africa with asset-based financing and agriculture training services to reduce hunger and poverty. Headquartered in Kakamega, Kenya, the organization works with farmers in rural villages throughout Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Zambia, and Ethiopia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farm Radio International</span>

Farm Radio International, or Radios Rurales Internationales, is a Canadian non-profit organization that was founded in 1979 by CBC Radio broadcaster George Atkins. The organization is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario and works with radio broadcasters to improve food security and agricultural methods for small-scale farmers and rural communities in African countries.

Purchase for Progress (P4P) is an initiative of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), involving over 500 partnerships, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, FAO, ACDI/VOCA, TechnoServe and others. Launched in September 2008 as a five-year pilot, P4P sought to explore programming and procurement modalities with the greatest potential to stimulate agricultural and market development in ways that maximized benefits to smallholder farmers. The program, largely developed by the eleventh Executive Director of the WFP, Josette Sheeran, arose as the WFP desired to purchase food in a way that was part of the "solution to hunger". These efforts are aligned with recommendations issued by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that call for an establishment of programs in support of socially vulnerable groups. and to the Zero Hunger Challenge launched by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Special UN Reporter 2012–2014, Olivier De Schutter, claimed that public procurement systems favour economically-strong bidders, thus excluding smallholder farmers. His conclusion was that public procurement schemes supportive of smallholders could have "powerful impacts on the reduction of rural poverty." P4P is built upon this very principle as it enables low-income farmers to supply food to the WFP's operations. Eventually the transaction can be regulated by a forward contract, with the farmer agreeing in selling in the future a certain amount of output at a fixed price. Essentially, the P4P program aims to create a wide and sophisticate market for commodities in developing countries.

AGRA,formerly known as the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa is an African-led African-based organization that seeks to catalyse Agriculture Transformation in Africa. AGRA is focused on putting smallholder farmers at the centre of the continent's growing economy by transforming agriculture from a solitary struggle to survive into farming as a business that thrives. As the sector that employs the majority of Africa's people, nearly all of them small-scale farmers, AGRA recognizes that developing smallholder agriculture into a productive, efficient, and sustainable system is essential to ensuring food security, lifting millions out of poverty, and driving equitable growth across the continent.

Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags are a hermetic storage technology developed by scientists at Purdue University. PICS bags are used to reduce losses of post-harvest cowpea due to bruchid infestations in West and Central Africa.

Bethel Nnaemeka Amadi was a Nigerian politician. He served as President of the Pan-African Parliament between 2012 and 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Njaba River</span> River in Imo State, Nigeria

Njaba River, in the Niger Delta Basin is a major tributary of Oguta Lake in Nigeria's South East Imo State. With 4.5m mean depth, the river has a total stream length of 78.2 km, basin area of 145.63 square kilometers and an average specific discharge of about 1700 m3/hour.

Winrock International is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase economic opportunity, sustain natural resources, and protect the environment. Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Washington, D.C., Winrock is named for Winthrop Rockefeller, who served as the 37th governor of Arkansas.

Digital agriculture, sometimes known as smart farming or e-agriculture, is tools that digitally collect, store, analyze, and share electronic data and/or information in agriculture. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has described the digitalization process of agriculture as the digital agricultural revolution. Other definitions, such as those from the United Nations Project Breakthrough, Cornell University, and Purdue University, also emphasize the role of digital technology in the optimization of food systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change in Nigeria</span> Emissions, impacts and response of Nigeria related to climate change

Climate change in Nigeria is evident from temperature increase, rainfall variability. It is also reflected in drought, desertification, rising sea levels, erosion, floods, thunderstorms, bush fires, landslides, land degradation, more frequent, extreme weather conditions and loss of biodiversity. All of which continues to negatively affect human and animal life and also the ecosystems in Nigeria. Although, depending on the location, regions experience climate change with significant higher temperatures during the dry seasons while rainfalls during rainy seasons help keep the temperature at milder levels. The effects of climate change prompted the World Meteorological Organization, in its 40th Executive Council 1988, to establish a new international scientific assessment panel to be called the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The 2007 IPCC's fourth and final Assessment Report (AR4) revealed that there is a considerable threat of climate change that requires urgent global attention. The report further attributed the present global warming to largely anthropogenic practices. The Earth is almost at a point of no return as it faces environmental threats which include atmospheric and marine pollution, global warming, ozone depletion, the dangers of pollution by nuclear and other hazardous substances, and the extinction of various wildlife species.

ColdHubs Ltd. is an Owerri-based company that provides solar-powered cold storage for small scale farmers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Babban Gona</span> Nigerian social enterprise organization

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.

Ecotutu limited is a Nigeria-based company that provides solar-powered cold storage for large and small scale farmers.

References

  1. ↑ "The 'Global Diplomacy Lab' tackles migration". Deutsche Welle . 2015-11-07. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  2. ↑ "Energy Storage Solution Wholesale, Solar & Energy storage Price". www.everexceed.com. Retrieved 2022-08-09.
  3. 1 2 3 Cairns, Rebecca (2021-07-23). "ColdHubs: How solar-powered cold storage is keeping food fresh in Nigeria". CNN (with video, 4 mins 10 secs). Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  4. 1 2 3 Monks, Kieron (2015-12-22). "A radio show host may have fixed Nigeria's worst problem". CNN. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "A rural radio service for small scale farmers". Appropriate Technology. 37: 68. Dec 2010 – via ProQuest.
  6. 1 2 3 "Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu". Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science. Retrieved 2021-12-29.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Tran, Mark (2011-12-20). "Airwave agriculturist: the smallholder farmer who became a broadcast pioneer". The Guardian . Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  8. 1 2 Hodal, Kate (2017-12-28). "How the sun's rays can keep food chilled: fighting waste in Africa". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  9. ↑ "Rural radio helps Nigerian farmers". Deutsche Welle (video, 3 mins 2 secs). 2016-08-20.
  10. ↑ El Ebrashi, Raghda; Menatallah, Darrag (January 2017). "Social entrepreneurs' strategies for addressing institutional voids in developing markets". European Journal of International Management . 11 (3): 335 – via ResearchGate.
  11. 1 2 3 Johnson, Mahmud (2011-09-07). "Africa: Surfing the Radio Waves for Sustainable Agriculture". allAfrica . Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  12. 1 2 "Radio changes rural lives in Nigeria". Qatar Tribune . 2010-12-10 – via Free Online Library.
  13. ↑ Pollard, Lawrence (2018-01-02). "Harnessing the sun to power cold storage". Newsday (video, 1 min). BBC.
  14. ↑ Crabbe, Nathaniel (2020-08-19). "Talented African man invents giant solar-powered refrigerators to help farmers". Yen.com.gh. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  15. 1 2 3 "Rolex Awards: Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu: Farming by radio". Rolex. 2010. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  16. ↑ "Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu". Ashoka. Retrieved 2021-12-28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.