Pictures from the Summit

OUTCOME of G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance / ISTANBUL

G20 YEA SUMMARY

This year Turkey was the host country for G20 YOUNG ENTREPRENUERS ALLIANCE, which is a platform for young entrepreneurs especially from G20 countries to exchange ideas and discuses challenges, opportunities and brain storm together. It is also a global network of young entrepreneurs and the organizations that support them.

TUGIAD which is the Turkish partner of G20 YEA did an excellent job on organizing and hosting members, delegates and international companies in Istanbul.

The topic of the summit was entrepreneurship culture. Mr. MUHTAR KENT as a successful businessman (CEO of Coca Cola TURKEY) underlined the importance of consumers. Some other facts were also discussed:

• Creating an understanding for sustainable and robust growth
• Good communication
• Good markets
• Consumer expressions (consumers talking about your product and exchanging thoughts about it) are strategic point to succeed.

In todays world with the increase of entrepreneurs, businesses and innovative strategies, product selection is on the rise . Importance of the consumer and perception of your product within consumers, might be the breaking point for victory.

Knowing that 75% of the workforce in G20 is by entrepreneurs (startups) in developing countries such as Turkey, India , Brazil  etc., entrepreneurship has a crucial role in these countries economies. By increasing the level of entrepreneurs, this will strengthen the business institutions and environment in these countries allowing companies in the developed nations access to financially dependent private sector by so doing they don’t have to dwell so much on the governmental agencies and the public sector. Subsequently understanding, strategies and work flow are more similar within entrepreneurs which makes business growth and development easier in the private sector.

The summit gave exceptional importance to educating and training entrepreneurs and creating mentoring programs especially in emerging nations.

The discussion also touched on women entrepreneurs. In the global economy, 30% of the entrepreneurs are Women. However women’s growth relatively is an economical issue in public and private sectors. Ms Demet Ozdemir from Ernst &Young Turkey underlines 3 key points for women in business

1. Access for funding
2. Mentorship
3. Networking

When we looked at these key points we agreed that there are more working difficulties in a traditional culture for females.

Nevzat Aydin, co-founder of YEMEKSEPETİ.COM which is online food ordering company providing the facility to place food orders online from an affiliated network of restaurants without charging the user any extra fee. He recently sold the company for 589million dollars and gave $237,000 to each worker (114 employee ) as profit bonus.

His success story was summarised with his statement: “ YOU GET BETTER OFFERS ONLY WHEN YOU REFUSE OTHER ONCE “ .

The innovator of 3Drobotics (mostly known as the founder of DRONE) suggests to entrepreneurs in emerging nations, to plan to get bigger systematically rather than starting big, for efficient and sustainable outcome.

All delegates had a common point on importance of entrepreneurs supporting each other. If we solve this, entrepreneurs can create an improved platform for growth for themselves and their economy. As entrepreneurs pushing government policies, spreading entrepreneurship culture is the least that we can do.

Nigeria is not currently a G20 member but my team is pushing to get a permanent sit for Nigeria in the G20 summit as the key role player of African economy.

Considering that most developed nations are looking for untapped markets to invest in, Nigeria is an open market to be molded for improvement and development.

As discussed in G20YEA, market problems and leadership problems play a crucial role in our progress.

While our young population is growing it tends to increase the standard of leaving enormously, this would only make our “market problem “ better / more solvable. However “leadership problem “ would also find an answer by empowering youth and creating useful mentoring programs.

While companies  are open to untapped emerging nations, they have to accommodate changes in cultural diversity in the possibility of the company becoming global. The basic cultural adjustment actions are : 1)keeping standard of quality of the company 2) hire local people 3) exchange resource.

Andile Khumalo – Chief Investment Officer of MSG Africa from South Africa pointed out Time magazines 2011 cover page where Africa was pointed out as a hopeless continent. Meanwhile the enormous growth and political stability in Africa has made many foreign investors and partners rethink that terminology.

I believe that when the challenges of Africa are seen as opportunities one becomes more aware of “real business”.

AGRICULTURAL TRENDS IN NIGERIA

AGRICULTURAL TRENDS IN NIGERIA

  The agriculture sector as the most dominant sector in the rural areas of Nigeria. It provides employment for about 60% of the work force. The diversity of climatic conditions, the richness of soil types and water sources, and the high population density provide great potentials for crop, animal, fish, and tree production. In the 1960s and up to the early 1970s, Nigeria’s agriculture flourished. The country was one of the world’s highest producers of palm oil, cocoa, and groundnut. Over time, agriculture has declined in importance. From what we see today, there are many signs that agriculture is regaining its past glory. The country is now the largest producer of cassava roots and yam tubers; livestock and soybean production is among the largest in Africa. 
The Nigerian Agricultural Sector has moved through different stages over the last half century. From being the major contributor to GDP, foreign exchange earnings and employment in the 1960’s, focus was gradually turned away from the sector. That neglect seems to have changed into attention, as evident in recent happenings. 

The perception of agriculture as ‘dirty’, ‘low-paying’ and ‘demanding’ are beginning to fade with more enlightenment. The newer generation of farmers, mainly young people are adding some style to the practice of agriculture. Many youth farmers now use ICTs in their agro-businesses to gather information, disseminate information as well as access markets. It is common to see young farmers perform intricate calculations like feed conversion ratio (FCR) for poultry rearing as well as catfish, calculations on pond size, among others by merely accessing information from the internet

A good number of youths interested in raising crops are looking beyond the manual form of cultivation to mechanisation

  

Current Status of Nigerian Agriculture

A brief Highlight of 2014 Agricultural Sector report titled- All eyes on the “Goldmine”

 “Currently, the country is the world’s largest producer of crops such as cassava (54millionMT), dry cowpea (2.5millionMT), kola nuts (138,000MT), melon seed (512,500MT), sorghum (6.90millionMT), coco yam (3.45millionMT) and yam (38millionMT); 2nd largest producer of crops such as cashew nuts (behind Vietnam- 836,500MT in 2012), millet (5millionMT) & sweet potatoes (3.4millionMT); 3rd largest producer of palm kernel (1.20millionMT- behind Indonesia & Malaysia); 4th largest producer of cocoa (383,000MT), ginger (156,000MT), groundnuts (3.07millionMT) & fresh vegetables (6.2millionMT); as well as the 5th largest producer of oil palm (940,000MT- behind Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand & Colombia) & pawpaw (775,000MT). 

 There is a huge supply gap to be filled for a lot of agricultural products for which the country has production potentials. For example, imports account for a significant portion (95%) of the rice and sugar consumed in the country. Yet, the country has sufficient land and suitable weather for these crops.
What is the way forward: Successive governments have put in place measures to aid the recovery of the agricultural sector, by addressing some of the long-standing bottlenecks- poor access to finance, lack of adequate supporting infrastructure, high levels of wastage, poorly developed value chains (especially the processing aspect) 
Agricultural products and top producer states:

Groundnut: the leading states are Niger, Kano, Jigawa, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna, Adamawa, Yobe, Borno, Taraba, Plateau, Nasarawa, Bauchi.

Cocoa: the main producing states (aside from Cross River, in the South East) are located in the South West of the country, which are Ondo, Osun, Cross River, Ekiti, Oyo, Edo, Ogun.
Tomato production : ( Nigeria ranked 16th on the global tomato production scale, accounts for 10.79 per cent of Africa’s and 1.2 per cent of total world production of tomatoes). Leading states are: Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kaduna, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba, Kano lead the pack in the commercial cultivation of the crop.
Seafood production: Mainly fish, shrimps, periwinkle, prawns, clams, oyster, and crayfish e.tc. Are produced in the coastal areas.Rivers, Lagos, Delta, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, kwara, Osun.
Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme.

The GES scheme is a federal initiative to actualize the Agricultural Transformation Agenda. It also aims to cut off middle men, bypass fraudulent officials and sell fertilizer directly to farmers through a private sector-driven process under which government-licensed agro dealers sell input to the registered farmers. It aims to subsidize the cost of major agricultural inputs.

The programme commenced in May 2012, and has registered over 14million farmers, through the e-wallet system.

With this system, farmers receive sms alerts on their mobile phones and precede to the nearest agro dealers. 

According to the former minister, about only 11% of Nigerian farmers benefitted from the old system

This system still has major challenges, they are listed below.

The first problem farmers have faced is systemic with the fault lying with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. Several millions of farmers who were registered in 2012 and 2013 have not been captured in the national database and so could not have benefitted from the programme. Further investigations showed that some of the agro dealers sell the products to traders because many farmers who come to redeem their input do not have the required amounts. For example, in Niger State, agro dealers do not even waste time explaining anything to farmers who come without the prescribed amounts. They just sell the products to others, farmers and traders, who are willing to buy.Apart from the apparent manipulation of the system by corrupt officials, the GES scheme is also bedeviled by systemic challenges and lapses. For a programme that targets about 10 million farmers this year, the number of redemption centers is ridiculously low.

Another obvious corrupt practice perpetrated by officials and agro dealers is the collection of illegal fees from farmers.

Although the GES scheme is a great leap in the agricultural sector, the setbacks are still present, and have to be critically attended to. Though there are some major impacts the GES scheme has made, there are more beneficiaries of the scheme. The former minister, said there’s been a rapid increase, from 11% to 60% of beneficiaries. He also stated that the farmers are able to produce 8.1 million metric tons of food. That’s a 70% increase.
Nigeria has improved its concentration of resources into the agricultural sector, but more can be done. To attract foreign direct investment (FDI), less imports, more exports, increase in revenue, create more job opportunities, which can reduce unemployment rate. 

With more focus on this potential robust sector, the possibilities are endless.