Babban Gona, which means "Great Farm" in the Hausa language, is a social enterprise organization that provides support for smallholder farmers in Nigeria to become more profitable.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Babban Gona is partly owned by the farmers it serves.[7][8]
History
Babban Gona was founded in 2012 by Kola Masha with the aim of promoting agriculture and reducing unemployment in Nigeria.[1][9] Kola temporarily relocated to a small village in the Northern part of Nigeria, which had been recently impacted by insurgent activities.[9]
To catalyse capital and fund the company’s expansion in order to tackle multiple constraints in smallholder farming with promising increases to farmer net incomes in an extremely poor region of Nigeria.[18]
How It Works
Babban Gona four key services to drive success for smallholder farmers:[6][19]
Training and Education
Financial Credit
Agricultural Input
Harvesting & Marketing Support
Babban Gona provides support for smallholder farmers through what the company calls "Trust Groups", grassroots level farmer cooperatives.[20] A group of 3-5 smallholder farmer members,[7][21] with a trust group leader assigned to each group, who is selected after passing agronomic knowledge test and oral leadership interview.[21] After a trust group is established, members of each trust group are trained on the following - agronomy, financial literacy, business skills and leadership through the BG Farm university platform.[22] Babban Gona members have a loan repayment rate estimated to be at about 98%.[21] Other trust group members are responsible for repaying if a trust group member defaults.[21]
