Agro-Drone Services to Help Small-Scale Farmers in Cameroon and Togo Cope with Climate Change

Mastercard Foundation Scholars and The Resolution Social Venture Challenge

Three students from Costa Rica’s EARTH University are improving the lives of smallholder farmers in Cameroon and Togo, helping to arm them with the tools they need to cope with the impact of climate change.

Mission Possible was founded in 2017 by Bleck Tita, originally from the Northwest region of Cameroon, and Komlan Kekeli Batchey and Elisabeth Bakoubolo, both from Lomé, Togo. Mission Possible aims to introduce an agro-drone service for isolated small-scale farmers in the Northwest region of Cameroon and in Lomé, Togo, to detect pests, provide soil salinity levels, give climate forecasts, and allow farmers to estimate farm yields.

Coping with the impacts of climate change in countries like Cameroon and Togo has not been an easy task for small-scale farmers. Climate change has triggered a gross decrease in farm yields, leading to a shortage of farm produce supplies to local markets, which in turn causes increased prices that force consumers to buy cheaper products from Nigeria and China.

Most farmers in the region have abandoned fishing and livestock farming because of prolonged droughts and dried-up rivers. Changes in the length of seasons have affected the production cycle of nearly 95 percent of the crops, promoting drastic rural-urban migration.

Research led by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in 2017 showed that changes in climate and seasons caught farmers off guard and unable to rapidly adapt, leading to decreased production and increased food insecurity and famine levels by 70 percent among the farming communities across Togo, Cameroon, Chad, Gabon and Nigeria.

“We consider a small-scale farmer to be a farmer who owns between one and twelve hectares of land on which he produces crops and livestock without using advanced and expensive technologies,” said Bleck.

These, according to Bleck, are isolated farmers who practise a type of farming usually characterized by intensive labour and, in most cases, animal traction, with limited use of agrochemicals. These farmers then supply their produce to the local or surrounding markets.

“Small-scale farmers in my community have an average of eight members per household, with six of them being children under the age of 17. In the Northwest region of Cameroon, crops like maize, plantain, banana, cocoyam, yams, beans, rice, and leafy vegetables are being produced. Also, livestock is important, ranging from goat and cows to poultry, pigs, and rabbits,” said Bleck.

In addition to climate change coping tools, farmers will also get post-harvest technology services such as dehydrators, cold storage rooms, and natural preservatives to enable the produce to reach market while still fresh.

“Mission Possible is creating a platform that brings together these local farmers twice a month with experts in agronomy and agricultural researchers to generate interactive schemes that provide solutions to most of the challenges they face,” said Elisabeth.

Mission Possible is a bridge between the farmer and the expert, performing general diagnostics on farms to determine their production status and possible problems.

“With the data generated, a database will be sent to experts who will scrutinize, analyze, interpret, and generate a series of recommendations with which Mission Possible builds an implementation plan to be delivered to farmers together with some common resources, to effectively work on their problems,” said Komlan.

The trio behind Mission Possible are Mastercard Foundation Scholars, selected for their academic talent, social consciousness, and leadership qualities.

Mission Possible won the Resolution Social Venture Challenge in 2018, a competition that rewards compelling leadership and promising social ventures led by youth. These young leaders earned a fellowship that includes seed funding, mentorship, and access to a network of young global change-makers to pursue impactful projects in their communities. A collaboration between the Mastercard Foundation and The Resolution Project, the Resolution Social Venture Challenge provides a pathway to action for socially responsible young leaders who want to create change that matters in their communities.

“We expect to start seeing an impact in two years, which will cover roughly four planting and harvesting seasons. This will give us enough data to measure growth on regression in production, income, and development. We are targeting roughly 3,500 farmers in the Northwest region of Cameroon, 2,900 farmers in Lomé, Togo, and possibly more than 5,000 in our planned expansion zones of Chad, Gabon, Congo, and Nigeria,” said Bleck.

The farmers are already aware of the project and have started enrolling into the system.

The farmers enroll in the system with a subscription plan at $3/month per farmer. “This is roughly one percent of a farmer’s income in this region,” said Elisabeth.

Besides obvious challenges like changing farmers’ mindsets, the team has an uplifting message for Africa.

“It is important to know that the smallest idea can change someone’s life. Let our actions impact the following generation, let us be the change that people have been waiting for,” said Elisabeth.

Komlan thinks there is no right time to begin playing a transformative role in society.

“You don’t have to be rich or have a beard before you start making a change. We have to stop waiting for the government to do things for us. Let’s take our own initiatives to better our lives instead, because at the end, we are the ones who are going to endure the consequences. The future of the world depends on the youth.”

Bleck sees hard work and luck as one and the same.

“Hard work creates luck. The harder we work, the more luck we have. Good things happen to good people and the more work we put in, the more luck and the more success we will get out.”

Pius Sawa is a freelance journalist based in Kenya. His stories have appeared in Reuters, Farm Radio International, and Inter Press Service.