Youth in Agricultural Technology Dissemination.

WeFarm Youth Ambassadors after training.

On December 4th 2015 in the presence of family, friends and  faculty members, the then Vice Chancellor of Egerton University, Prof James Tuitoek, gave me powers to read and do all that pertains to my degree.

On that day, my course mates and I were conferred a bachelor’s degree in Agriculture. It was an auspicious day full of excited students who were happy to finally graduate after four years of hard labor. What lay ahead of us was way important than the celebrations. How were we going to make our mark in this wide world? The task that lay ahead of us was more daunting than any unit or course we had ever tackled in campus but we were determined nevertheless. We had completed school on August the same year so we had around three months of hustling for jobs and man! those three months seemed like three years.

That aside, I managed to get an internship opportunity in an awesome startup company that bridges the gap in agricultural information. WeFarm is a social enterprise that provides farmers with an avenue to ask their daily farming questions via their phones at no cost. For the three months that I have been there, I have gained a vast wealth of knowledge and skills. Part of my duties include user acquisition which translates to taking this new technology to the farmer at the grass root level. This the kind of job that requires one to be proactive and flexible.

For this exercise,we recruited recent agricultural graduates like myself to be ambassadors in their counties. But, why use young people? The youth are better placed in the society to acts as  agents of change for they are quick to grasp new things and are very open to technology. And since they are well known within their community, people tend to trust them more than they would trust a stranger. Their mobility and agility also works well to introduce a new technology into the farmers’ world.  According to extension education one of the best way to take new innovations to communities is by use of front line officers (FLEOs) who are well known by the community in question. This is especially so as they are already known by the community and have already established links in the community. The new innovation would simply be riding on the already established relationship to make it even more solid.

This experience has been a great one full of opportunities and challenges. For us recent graduates, it has been a chance to utilize in disseminating this new agricultural technology and our classroom knowledge to the farmer. We have been able to overcome these challenges and ride on the opportunities availing themselves to meet our goals. Kenya has a large number of smallholder farmers who are illiterate and this has sometimes proved to be a hurdle that we always overcome. This is a worthwhile involvement for recent graduates to have a chance in their career development. All in all it is a good start for us as we head out to the world energized and well equipped to contribute to food security in Kenya while doing something we love.