Digital Mentoring! Philippine Agri Innovations Copied In African Programs

“Thank you for mentoring us here in Africa. You’re such a blessing. You just don’t know how much you have done great work in Africa . Most of our lectures here in our Agric community work is copied from all your program.”
This was the message I received yesterday from Filipino Food Security Adviser, Dr. Danilo Siega, who is helping craft an Agricultural Master Plan for an emerging nation in Africa, New Sudan.
Dr. Siega, a native of Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, is one of the few expatriates in the Nuba Mountain Region of Sudan who is now helping the de facto government of the emerging nation of “New Sudan” in designing an agricultural program for the formerly war-torn region.
The Nuba Mountain Region which had been declared “liberated” from Sudan after years of fighting, has a population of 1.5-million in an area of about 8-million hectares, almost as large as the island of Mindanao.
Landlocked, the Nuba tribes had been largely dependent on Agriculture, including corn and millet farming and goat raising using the native Nubian Goat breed.
Dr. Siega has introduced Sorghum Silage Production for the endemic Nubian Goats of the region, an innovation which is being introduced for the first time in spite of the fact that Sorghum is native to Africa.
Free-range Chicken Farming is another project being promoted by Dr. Siega and his group drawing inspiration from the Free-Range Manok Pinoy Program which I started in my farm in 2010.
The concept of Water Management and Conservation which I had long promoted to prepare the country for the long droughts is now being incorporated in the Food Security Program that Dr. Siega is preparing.
He said that the new Governor of the Nuba Mountain Region, Said Kaccho, has expressed interest in inviting me and my team to the new nation knowing that Dr. Siega’s agricultural innovations were based largely on what I am advocating in the Philippines.
The distance between the Philippines and the landlocked new nation of the Nuba Mountain Region may prevent me from physically assisting in their agricultural programs but the magic of digital communications technology could bridge that distance.
#SharingFoodSecurityAdvocacy!
#FoodIsUniversalLanguage!
(Photos show Filipino Food Security Advisor Dr. Danilo Siega with the Governor of the Nuba Mountain Region of Sudan, Said Kaccho and elders of the new nation.)