Youth Unemployment and Food Insecurity: What Moja Plans to Do
Digitally Savvy, Young Agripreneurs
Moja has always viewed agriculture as a productive field in which to apply our digital infrastructure. What’s different right now is that the agricultural context across southern Africa has become desperate from the drought, which is due to rapidly changing climate conditions. Small-holder farmers need to learn new climate smart agricultural techniques adapted for low water environments, and they need to be able to trade in wider circles, even as they take simultaneous steps to become more resilient to climate shocks. These three priorities have become the highest-level priority of governments, Ministries of Agriculture, NGOs, universities and vocational training authorities, and the broader agricultural ecosystem throughout southern Africa. Moja has an out-of-the-box solution to address these priorities in a scalable way through the Moja app. This solution is part of a broader digitalization and agricultural strategy, which we are calling the “Digitalization and Food Security Project” and will be examined in future blog posts.
New Collaborative Partnerships and Key Priorities
To address these priorities successfully, Moja has entered collaborative partnerships with key stakeholders in Malawi, Zambia, and South Africa. These partners are collaborating with Moja to add capacity and deliver vital services to vulnerable small share-holder farmers and to jointly mobilize resources to fund these collaborative goals. What are the goals? They are: (1) To develop and deliver community training programs through the Moja platform that create jobs for the youth and address regional challenges in the Food-Energy-Water nexus in southern Africa. (2) To catalyze agribusiness through the Moja platform, creating market linkages for new and existing agricultural MSMEs to promote and sell their products. (3) To cushion the impact of climate change on vulnerable food producers by providing access to affordable insurance and access to capital. (4) To jointly collaborate in mobilizing resources and forming partnerships to increase agricultural productivity, commercialization, and industrialization opportunities across southern Africa. Moja’s goal is to enable and coordinate a circular economy of agribusinesses across the region through digitizing value chains, delivering quality climate smart agricultural training, and offering resources to food producers to help them develop resilience to climate shocks.
Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa
Climate change has impacted Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia in direct and consequential ways. In South Africa, the impact has been more gradual: A recent Shoprite report projects that by 2025, nearly half of South Africa’s population will be food insecure, with 48.96% of the population not having enough to eat. Throughout the region, increased temperatures have led to changes in rainfall patterns, resulting in both droughts and floods, affecting agriculture, water availability, and food security. This has consequences for rural livelihoods, particularly for small-holder farmers who rely on rain-fed agriculture. Additionally, changes in weather patterns have contributed to the spread of diseases such as malaria and cholera. Ecosystems and wildlife are also under threat due to habitat loss and changes in vegetation patterns. Overall, climate change poses significant challenges to the economy, environment, and public health of these southern African nations.
Recently the Presidents of Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have declared the droughts in their countries to be national disasters and emergencies. The drought has devastated food production, leading to grain shortages and increased food prices, as well as increased load shedding from the reduction of hydroelectric power generation due to the lack of rainfall. Reduced availability of electricity has led to increased consumption of biomass fuels such as charcoal for cooking, which were already high, but now are having immediate and negative climate impacts. Zambia is recovering from a recent deadly cholera outbreak. The United Nations estimates that 60 million people are currently experiencing crisis level of food insecurity in the region. The lack of rainfall has led to an acute crisis in the food, nutrition, and energy nexus.
Small-holder farmers need to be insulated from this crisis and must be adequately supported to transform their agricultural productivity so that they can still produce food for their families and the nation despite the change in climate. Governments have put in place various strategies to contain the situation. Among other things, they are calling for local stakeholders to join their efforts to build resilience among communities caused by climate shocks.
In South Africa, Moja formed a non-profit in late 2023 to leverage the benefits of a program initiated by the government called Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (“B-BBEE”). The program is designed to empower black people and provide a foundation for growth. Moja is such a tool, providing training and jobs, through its marketplace and online Academy. Moja’s goal in South Africa is to have 100,000 small businesses operating on the platform within 12-18 months. Moja will provide Moja Market and Moja Academy, in collaboration with the convening power and expert training resources of our partner Centre for Ecological Intelligence at the University of Johannesburg, to help empower South African youth to establish community-based eco-agribusiness hubs for youth employment and food security in inner-city and peri-urban areas in Gauteng to begin before spreading across the country.
Four Strategic Areas of Collaborative Action
CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURE TRAINING DELIVERED THROUGH MOJA ACADEMY
Moja will upload into Moja Academy and deliver through the Moja app agricultural training videos, case studies, text used for teaching and illustration purposes, and other learning aids. Moja will troubleshoot problems that learners have with technical support or getting onboarded to the Moja platform. This is Moja’s principal role and responsibility as far as the training component is concerned.
Moja Academy enables human capital development and mindset change.
MOJA CATALYZES AND ENHANCES NEW AND EXISTING AGRIBUSINESSES THROUGH MOJA MARKET
MSMEs connected to agribusiness hubs, cooperatives, and consortiums can create their own personalized storefront in minutes, and groupings of them can be structured into digital value chains that create and recycle value within a circle economy structure.
Moja’s secure payment engine is seamlessly integrated with local mobile money and bank accounts.
Moja’s exclusive “virtual escrow” protects the buyer from fraud and builds trust.
Moja Market provides a digital marketplace to promote the products or services of a small-holder farmer’s business.
Moja Market will coordinate and facilitate market linkages of the MSME’s products and services in local, regional, and international markets.
Moja supplies scalable digital infrastructure, support, and expertise to southern Africa’s vibrant commercial and agricultural sectors to enable economic infrastructure and private sector dynamism.
Moja will assist southern Africa to digitalize its agricultural value chains and industries, thus enabling countries to more effectively aggregate national output for export, strengthening foreign exchange.
Moja Market is digital infrastructure that enables the circle economy to form and to scale.
3. MOJA VALUE-ADDED SERVICES CUSHION THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE SHOCK BY PROVIDING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE INSURANCE AND ACCESS TO CAPITAL
Moja will assess the risks, constraints, lack of awareness, and understanding of insurance and finance instruments faced by southern Africa’s small-holder value chains.
Moja will develop education and training in risk management, insurance, loan repayment and default; and assess the value of insurance options and loan financing to stakeholders and integrate measures that foster trust.
Moja will assess, develop, offer, and support feasibility-tested, affordable insurance and loan products.
Moja will set up a trusted enrollment and delivery channel to distribute benefits and streamline communication.
4. MOJA AND ITS PARTNERS WILL JOINTLY COLLABORATE IN MOBILIZING RESOURCES AND ONBOARDING NEW PARTNERS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE STRATEGIC PRIORITIES