2019 Grant Notes

Introduction
Starting in 2018, Carriage House Farm has made itself available to the Young African Leaders
Initiative’s Mandela-Washington Fellowship. The flagship program empowers young people
through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking. In 2019, the Fellowship will
provide 700 outstanding young leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa with the opportunity to hone
their skills at a U.S. college or university with support for professional development after they
return home. This year, Carriage House Farm was paired with Otil Venancio Amoroso Lufuma.

Lufuma Lives in Soyo, in northern Angola on the banks of the Congo River and the North-
Western Atlantic coast. He is a former oil and gas drilling platform worker turned farmer. His
family has deep, rich, roots within the local culture and owns several large plots of land similar
in size to Carriage House Farm. This farm and forest and those owned by his sisters (each
received a portion of the father’s and grandfather’s farm) are located well outside of Soyo. Otil
Lafuma’s farm is located inside the zone of Pedra Do Feitico. The road network between farm
and city is lacking, and what would be a thirty minute drive in the United States can take hours,
relying on a rented cargo truck that makes one round trip to the village weekly. Often times the
truck is prone to mechanical failures, leaving him stranded or delayed. He commutes to the
farm, spending a week on the farm and then returning to his family in the city when he has
completed his tasks.

On his farm, Otil Lufuma produces sweet potatoes/yams, an open pollinated milling corn,
peanuts, bananas, small amounts of coffee, and palm oil. The farm land has excellent access to
water thanks to plentiful rainfall and has rich soils that have not been abused. Lufuma clearly
wishes to put this land into full production in a sustainable fashion with heavy rotation of
annual crops and proper stewardship of his perennial resources such as timber and fruit. While
hand and power tools are scarce, those that are available are well-used and taken care of and
made use of in innovative ways. He makes do with a barter system with those living near his
farm where he exchanges food and timber in return for labor. The agreement is enjoyed by
both land owner/farmer and neighbor/laborers.

He recognizes a growing need to feed a portion of the population that is lacking in a proper diet
as well as educate those willing to learn agricultural skills. Unlike the United States, where
farmers are respected and are considered an important part of the fabric of the nation, most in
Angola consider agriculture the bottom of the social and economic ladder. Otil Lufuma wishes
to change this in his region of the country. With the primary goal of helping end hunger in Soyo
and its surrounding suburbs, he hopes to educate the local people in lost farming techniques by
building a small education site on his farm. Students who attend the education center would
learn how to grow food for themselves while at the same time providing basic labor for the
farm. Students would learn farming fundamentals that Lufuma already has or has gained
through his experiences in the Mandela Washington Fellowship program, producing crops that
are in high demand in the street markets of Soyo and the growing resort and oil businesses
located on the coast.
The Problem

The core problem is a lack of small business lending and/or national and international grant
opportunities for local small business development. While there is a lot of development
money being used to benefit the large corporations moving into Angola, primarily for energy-
based businesses (oil and gas, refining, mining) there is little available (if any) to the population
at large. In the United States, Lufuma could borrow against the land he owns and the small
agricultural business he currently conducts. Researching the problem we have found he is
developing what could be both a profitable and sustainable business that not only benefits him
but a large number of people within his community. Yet, he is unable to find any form of
investment capital, loans, or grants.

The problem needing to be solved has three parts:

The first is the need for transportation to travel the weekly drive of 123km each week back and
forth between Soyo, Angola, where Otil lives and where the demand for the food he grows is
located, and Pedra Do Feitico, Angola where the farm is located. He would also be able to
transport small numbers of students, supplies, and harvest back and forth between the two
locations. A truck would also allow Lufuma to scale up his farm production to reach larger
markets and larger wholesale customers not currently available to Lufuma with his reliance on
a spotty and unreliable delivery method.

The second is the ability to affordably purchase additional tools and seeds for farm production.
These items are hard to acquire in Soyo and, like the truck, require capital to be able to invest
in. Currently, with the seeds and tools available to Lufuma, he is able to farm only 4 hectares of
his 160 total hectares of farmland.

Third is access to workers with agricultural experience. There is a glut of labor available near
Lufuma’s farmland, due in large part to significant unemployment and poverty. But that labor is
almost entirely untrained and thus must either be trained or micro-managed in a way that is
deeply inefficient for an agricultural endeavor.

The Solution
The solution to

We need to find the capital for Lufuma so he can invest it in a pick-up truck, a variety of hand
tools, and some basic infrastructure improvements on his farm to provide classroom space,
simple dormitories, and communal cooking/eating space for students and/or visiting ag
instructors.
This can be done through a variety of international means but locally there are very few
options. KIVA, a micro/crowd lending agency does not have partners in Angola. Local banks
rarely invest in local small businesses. We are hoping to attain a grant through the YALI/USAID
program later this year. The initial grant submission period is Sept1 to Oct 1. This is currently
the most easily accessible capital for Lufuma to pursue.

We are also hoping to find an angel investor within the United States or a variety of
organizations that may be able to help. The amount of time the fellows have with their host
organizations following their stay at U.S. Universities has been shortened by two weeks
allowing for little time outside the hands-on education the host is supposed to provide. We at
Carriage House Farm hope to work with other organizations to make this dream of Lufuma’s a
reality even after he returns home.

The last part of the solution would be to develop income from the crops produced. We suggest
a two-tier system of retail and wholesale where employees would sell at market layered with
several wholesale accounts. This will decrease the amount of food waste that happens when
Lufuma’s farm produces large crops that may over-saturate a retail market. There are a variety
of hotels and restaurants in the Soyo that may be approachable. Lufuma has suggested that he
would also look into selling to the commissaries/food halls used by the energy companies that
operate mining and drilling operations in the area. Either customer would offer a demand for
locally produced foods. Together these two approaches to generate revenue would build a
sustainable system that does not require outside capital support. This would be similar to the
model adopted by Suzzane DeYoung at La Soupe.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
513.967.1106
richard@carriagehousefarmllc.com