Sierra Leone could learn a lot from Burkina Faso. Food security is economic sovereignty. This is the mentality of the Burkinabe head of state Captain Ibrahim Traore as he made an order of over 1,000 tractors, machines, and innovations to boost his country’s agriculture sector all aimed at freeing the country from decades of food dependency and other aid that have contributed to their food insecurity. Burkina Faso is a landlocked country that depends mostly on Ghana to access the Atlantic Ocean.
Sierra Leone could learn a lot from Burkina Faso.
In a bold and strategic move that will change the course of Burkina Faso’s history, Traore ordered the machines in the hope of a large scale agricultural transformation in a country where people had given up on farming as labour intensive with low financial returns and yields.
The ordering of the machines that arrived through Ghana is aimed at boosting local agricultural productivity by empowering local farmers so the people and country can be freed from their overreliance on foreign food imports and aid, especially the shackles of food dependency.
According to food experts, the move by the junta leader Captain IB Traore is a turning point for Burkina Faso’s development as the shift in focus to food self-sufficiency is also about economic sovereignty, national sovereignty, and a vision of a self-sufficient future.
Before this huge order of machines to help mechanize Burkina Faso’s return to the soil, farmers in this landlocked country that depends on ports in Ghana for her imports had to contend with poor soil, poor returns or yields, out dated tools, and dependence on imports and aid.
All it took for the people and government to start seeing the problem with food dependency was a shift in national identity and mentality, a movement away from dependency to a future where Burkina Faso feeds itself.
Before the arrival of the agricultural machines, whose arrival caused widespread jubilation all across the country, farmers used rudimentary tools and operated under a system where foreign aid and externally driven development projects dictated its agricultural and other progress, which setup encouraged dependency instead of fostering true empowerment.
Meanwhile, in a move that is seen as revolutionary, the imported machines were neither gifted nor donated by some agency. They are calculated investments by a regime aimed at reclaiming control over its nation’s food production since local farmers can now cultivate larger plots, increase yields, and begin to see farming not as a struggle for survival but as a sustainable profession.
What is so interesting about Ibrahim Traore’s focus on agriculture is that he hails from Burkina Faso’s agriculture belt and has seen what farming can do for not only the country but for the farming families. The real empowerment of this move by Traore is that it empowers local farmers who are considered poor and vulnerable, not large enterprises. The plan is to aid internally displaced farmers and to control the agricultural value chain from production to processing and distribution. This empowerment also comes with downstream industries aimed at teaching the local farmers to increase on production.
Meanwhile, the leaders of Burkina Faso have finally decided to cut down on spending billions of dollars enriching foreign markets through imports. These billions have been redirected to locals through training in modern farming techniques and building processing plants.
Before this transformation in agriculture, Burkinabe farmers used to export raw crops at low prices only to import processed foods at significantly higher
costs. Now, the focus is on reducing costs, creating jobs, and empowering farmers as entrepreneurs because many young people had left the farms for the urban areas as they saw farming as just for survival, not a profitable profession with real economic potential.
But what can Sierra Leone learn from Burkina Faso?
The first lesson would be a shift in mentality and focus. The current mentality is that it is safer to import food than to grow and export our surpluses, which money can be used for other pressing needs and purposes. We spend too much on food imports, around $300 million a year, for which we don’t see the qualification. The country has to knuckle down and invest in mechanized farming with the training for farming families to boot.
But the most transformational action Sierra Leone can take when we get to that point of mechanized farming is the use of its over-bloated prison population in the work of farming. The money saved from importing food can now be used to fund local agricultural projects.
We have a situation where people go to prison to get fat while people on the outside are in desperate search for food for them and their loved ones. The nation should start seeing the prison system as a business enterprise and start using that entire dormant workforce to not only feed the nation but also make money for the state.
In Sierra Leone, the police, army, and prison don’t have their own farms and have to depend on the same importer to supply them with rice. This has to stop if we are to ever be an agricultural or economic sovereignty. There will no longer be the need to import expired food as, apart from the officers, prisoners will be put to work.
The present situation in our prisons where there are people who procure rice, salt, pepper, greens, onions and the like for prisoners while taxpayers on the outside cannot afford to feed themselves has to come to an end. These procurement people are working on commission from people who are alleged to be using such money they make from our government to fund terrorist organizations. These importers don’t own farms to empower locals and are known for importing expired rice and other foodstuff we can produce locally if our mentality and focus were to change.
The new focus should be breaking our dependency on foreign aid and imports and knuckling down to the real work of farming. The situation where one foreign businessman whose profits are always capital flight prone can import rice and food for our security sector and nation is a national security threat, a situation that will always see us dependent on others to feed us.
There is an urgent need for us to look to Burkina Faso for inspiration on agricultural and economic sovereignty. Lonta!