THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
As a student, Leah Wangari imagined a glamorous life as a globe-trotting flight attendant, not toiling in dirt and manure.
Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya’s skyscraper-filled capital, the 28-year-old said farming was the last thing on her mind. The decision to drop agriculture classes haunted her later, when her efforts in agribusiness investing while running a fashion venture failed.
She made her way to an unusual new reality TV show, the first of its kind in Africa. Don’t Lose the Plot trains contestants from Kenya and neighboring Tanzania and gives them plots to cultivate, with a $10,000 investment credit for the most productive. The goal is to prove to young people that agriculture can be fun and profitable.
“Being in reality TV was like the best feeling ever, like a dream come true for me,” Wangari said. But she found it exhausting. As callouses built up on her hands, her friends made bets that she wouldn’t succeed.
Don’t Lose the Plot aims to inspire young adults in East Africa to pursue agribusiness entrepreneurship. Producers said the show wants to demystify the process of starting a small business and challenge the prejudices against farming-related careers, even as many rural youths flee to cities.
Attracting people to agriculture is no small challenge in Africa, where a booming young population is often put off by the image of punishing work and poor, weather-beaten farmers.
Africa has more than 60 percent of the world’s fertile but uncultivated land while importing $35 billion to $50 billion in food per year, the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa says. Weak or corrupt land governance is a challenge, as is conflict.
Yields for major crops remain low compared to other regions of the world. Change must come by empowering the smallholder farmers who produce 80 percent of the food consumed on the continent, the organization says.
Now Wangari is one of them. After placing fourth in Don’t Lose the Plot, she became a full-time mushroom farmer.
“When I see young men in the village now sitting idle, I feel disappointed because there is a lot of idle land and they can use it to make ends meet,” she said. “They don’t require a lot of capital, but they don’t have the information.”