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Meet The Nigerian Entrepreneur Depriving Boko Haram Of New Recruits https://ift.tt/2H2JSHH Much ink has been spilled analyzing what makes violent extremist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram tick—and even more, how we can combat their influence. Often, these inquiries focus on ideology. But just as important are the economic factors that drive disaffected men and women to join radical groups. Young people are more vulnerable to extremist recruitment when they feel they have no other options: no jobs, no wages, no ability to put food on the table. In rural Nigeria, which suffers from high youth unemployment and multiple violent insurgencies, this dynamic is a ticking time bomb. And it threatens not only thousands of lives, but the economic wellbeing and investment health of Africa's most populous nation. Kola Masha, a fellow social entrepreneur and recipient of a Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, believes that there's a business solution to halting the spread of insecurity. He founded Babban Gona in 2010 to bring jobs and stability to his home country of Nigeria. I recently sat down with Kola to chat agriculture, youth employment, and how investing in rural areas can "deprive insurgencies of the oxygen they need to thrive." WILLY FOOTE: Let’s talk about your business, Babban Gona. What is it, and why did you found it? KOLA MASHA: In 2007, I moved back from the US to Nigeria—my childhood home—after completing my studies at MIT and Harvard and working in leadership positions with top organizations. I wanted to join a company that would couple my skills at developing and scaling early-stage businesses with my intense desire to have a positive impact. I found this combination at Notore: a high-impact, early-stage, agriculture-related company based in Port-Harcourt. It was here, in the heart of the Niger Delta, that I witnessed firsthand how insecurity manifested. I realized that, as oxygen is to fire, so are unemployed youth to insecurity—and there are a lot of unemployed youth in Nigeria. To do my part to solve this challenge, in 2012 I moved to a small village in northern Nigeria—an impoverished area most recently impacted by insurgencies and brutal bombings—with an idea: To halt the spread of insecurity by unlocking the power of agriculture as a job creation engine. Due to high demand for labor and low skill requirements, farming has the potential to create jobs and draw millions of young people into the sector. The question is how? A hundred years ago, in the US, my grandfather was a poor smallholder farmer in South Dakota. Yet he was able to chart a path out of poverty for himself and my mother. He did this through the power of cooperatives. Inspired by my grandfather, we built a model to franchise mini farmer cooperatives and called it Bah-ban Go-na, which means “Great Farm” in Hausa. Business via Forbes - Entrepreneurs https://ift.tt/dTEDZf May 30, 2018 at 10:47AM
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