UPDATE: We’re committed to empowering small holder farmers — Heifer boss

HEIFER’s new President and CEO, SuritaSandosham, has reaffirmed the commitment of the organisation to elevate 10 million smallholder farming households globally out of poverty and into economic self-reliance by 2030, in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.

Sandosham visited Africa as the first stop, on a global tour of the nonprofit development organisation’s operations, which will also include visits to regional teams in Asia and the Americas.

She met the Africa team members at the regional headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria, which allowed her to share her vision and her excitement for the work Heifer Africa is doing in the region.

While addressing stakeholders, Sandosham said: “Heifer believes that smallholder farmers hold the key to transforming Africa’s food insecurity. With food importation across Africa averaging over $43 billion annually, we believe that access to finance, access to innovation, access to infrastructure and access to training, can increase food production and strengthen local food systems, reducing vulnerability to climate shocks and long-term dependency on imports.”

Speaking on the CEO’s visit to the region, Heifer International Senior Vice President for Africa Programmes, Adesuwa Ifedi, said: “Having the CEO visit the region and meet our partners and key stakeholders was critical to restate our position that for Africa’s food systems to thrive, the combination of interventions and partnerships at all levels is needed. Our strategic goal as a region over the next eight years is to assist more than six million farmers to reach a sustainable living income by 2030, through strategic private and public sector partnerships to reach a transformational scale.”