YEAP: Agriculture has never been so fashionable
Haowa Bello is a 33-year old agropreneur from Lagos, Nigeria. She is also the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Madame Coquette, a company that designs and manufactures a line of luxury leather bags produced locally and sold globally, in New York, Berlin, London. Haowa is one of the many young beneficiaries of the Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme (YEAP) that FAO is implementing in Nigeria, together with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
YEAP was designed in 2013 to increase decent rural employment opportunities for Nigerian youth along area-based priority agricultural value chains. The programme is expected to create 750,000 jobs for youth in the agricultural sector, over a 5-year period. So far, 6,618 young Nigerian agropreneurs have been trained in different value chains, in the framework of YEAP (3,893 female and 2,725 males).
Precisely thanks to a YEAP grant, Haowa was able to set up a commercial goat farm in Lagos, called Fula Farms, which is connected to her fashion enterprise, Madame Coquette. While selling meat and dairy, Haowa also produces the leather used for her handbags. This allows her to control the quality of her handbags' raw materials and also the whole supply chain.
Thanks to the two different income streams, Fula Farms is rapidly expanding and can currently count on 5 regularly contracted young employees. Moreover, in busy periods of the season, the farm provides additional temporary job opportunities. Fula Farms sells its products locally, in Lagos State, to markets, individuals and restaurants.
On the other hand, the handbags of Madame Coquette have been a huge success and are nowadays marketed globally. YEAP funds allowed both Fula Farms and the connected Madame Coquette to improve their infrastructure, set up a presence online and therefore increase their clients' base, the number of livestock and their retailing points. Both businesses have shown meaningful progress and have made great strides.
Haowa's success story has received a lot of attention from the media and has been featured on CNN's African Voices. The media coverage has taken the business to a new, higher level. Fula Farms is now regularly organizing, together with schools, fieldtrips to the farm to encourage kids to learn about agriculture and youth to explore the agricultural sector as a business and employment opportunity. At the same time, Madame Coquette has set up a training programme for youth on how to produce quality leather and handbags.
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