Songhai Newsletter- December, 2023
“Songhai,” is a symbol of the new Africa, named after the great empire of West Africa a few centuries ago.
Songhai is an agricultural center in Porto-Novo, Benin. Founded by Fr. Godfrey Nzamujo in 1984, his vision over the past thirty years has centered on sustainable, regenerative/ organic agriculture that produces more and better with less. The people at Songhai are not only economically self-sufficient to ensure food security in their communities, but their socio-economic activities have positive spread-effects on their neighboring communities. “Waste to wealth” is the driving philosophy of the Songhai movement.
Songhai is a zero- waste project. Everything is recycled. It produces its own energy and grows crops that are fertilized by the recycled waste products of animals and plants. At every level, byproducts from one area are used in another. Crop waste is used to feed the animals and their waste is turned into biogas; a natural fuel that powers the farm.
Songhai sells food and vegetables at markets around the country to generate income. They produce bananas, mushrooms, pigs, fish, chickens, ducks, varieties of beans, maize, cashew nuts, and rice. They make their own machines at the foundry, bottle drinking water, and provide fish for people.
There is a laboratory onsite that produces EMS, effective microorganism solution, to apply to crops and soil and replace the nutrients and microorganisms that have been lost through decades of applications of chemicals. Much of the soil in Africa has been degraded and needs to be regenerated by adding microbes and other bacteria to the soil.
Nzamujo believes that Africa has not only been exploited by other countries for its resources, but also has a “victim” mentality which needs to be challenged and changed. He wants Songhai to be independent from outside help, from the well-meaning NGO’s that want to help. He likes the old expression, “If you give a man a fish, you have to give him another tomorrow. But if you teach him to fish, he’s free! Songhai’s mission is to teach Africans to fish.” He laughs, “And we do even more than that. We teach them to grow fish!”
Nzamujo wants to transform Africa from a continent filled with used electronics, clothing, and other various donations from well-meaning countries to a continent that makes its own energy and food and is in the driver’s seat for its own future. He says, “We’ve been importing poverty and exporting wealth. It’s time to change that mentality.”
He is building “green rural cities”, the opposite of large industrial cities like Lagos, where the poverty is rampant and unemployment high. He believes that building these small cities starts with respecting nature and transforming the soil so it can produce enough food for its millions of people. But even more than that, Songhai produces pride and respect for each worker, knowing that their contribution is important. They have been able to transform from being recipients of the good will of other countries into being the producers of their own future.
Songhai has been so successful that over 30,000 young people have been trained there since 1985 and have gone on to establish their own farms and communities with the same principles. Nzamujo has established a Songhai leadership Academy which teaches the young people to put Songhai principles into practice in their own countries and communities. Songhai continues to help them financially and as a community until they can be independent.
Songhai is not only about feeding people- it is providing jobs and giving the youth of Africa a hope for their future and a way out of poverty and hopelessness. Songhai has established many sites in other African countries, including Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, The Gambia, Ghana, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Togo, Uganda, and has even reached as far as Guadalupe and Martinique in the Caribbean.
Nzamujo was awarded the Africa prize for leadership in 1994 and the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization’s 70th year award in 2017. Songhai has recently been working with the World Food Program in Ghana and is even now, beginning work in Niger to start new sites in a country undergoing great political upheaval.
All this has happened because of the vision of one man. Now there are thousands of people helping that vision become a reality. Feeding the world’s population in a sustainable way that enhances the environment is not just the role of a few countries or projects. It is something that is needed everywhere to combat the continuing degradation of the land and the soil.
In the coming years when we are coping with increasing population and undeniable climate change, enabling people to provide healthy food for themselves while preserving the land and soil for future generations is vital to our world.
Songhai represents the battle of ordinary people against wealth and domination. It is the hope that millions of people will determine their own lives, providing their own food, energy, technology and innovation.
Our hope is to ensure that the concepts and philosophy of Songhai can gain even more recognition and continue to change the world for the better.
There are many “new beginnings” at Songhai recently, and we’d like to tell you about a few of them.
There are so many problems in the world today, including climate change, food insecurity, poverty, energy needs, and jobs for the youth, just to name a few. Father Nzamujo always emphasizes that the world can’t continue to try to solve these problems the old way. That way has not worked, and we need to find new solutions. He compares it to an old car that isn’t working. No matter who is driving, it still won’t reach its destination. We need a new car with new drivers. Songhai is trying to come up with new and innovative solutions to these world problems.
One solution is through energy. Songhai, in the past few years, has installed many solar pumps and panels and is almost completely powered by the sun. The solar pumps are used to pump the water from the lakes to irrigate all the crops that are grown there. Almost all the sites in Benin are using solar power at the present time.
And solar panels are installed to produce electricity, while underneath them, crops are being grown.
A natural gas unit has just been completed this September at Porto-Novo. It is the largest one in the continent of Africa and together with the solar installations will provide all the energy needs of the entire site. It not only produces energy but provides a real-life example of how other sites and areas can become self-sufficient in their energy use.
Songhai has always been a leader in combatting food insecurity, but producing the microorganisms that add to the soil had helped improve the growth and yield of every crop.
Adding these microorganisms to the soil can replenish the soil as well as improve each crop. Songhai produces and markets these microorganism solutions (EMS) to be used on crops everywhere. They hope to produce more of this solution in their laboratories to be sold and used all over Africa to help combat land degradation and enrich the soil.
Songhai has provided jobs for so many young people in the agriculture sector, and the trainees take and use these methods of organic and sustainable agriculture in their own countries and farms.
On a personal note, I’ve have had the opportunity to visit Songhai twice, and when I walk through the center, I see crops of tomatoes and corn and cassava, pens of chickens and turkeys, pigs, goats, an African breed of cows, horses and mules. I see large ponds which are full of tilapia and catfish, and ponds which house the smaller fish. There are three restaurants to feed the large amount of people who work and train at the facility, plus the visitors that come every day to experience Songhai. There have been over 8,000,000 people who have visited Songhai since its inception in 1985.
Machine shops provide and repair all the farm equipment, and a huge gas facility provides natural gas for the center. Solar panels are everywhere, providing energy so that Songhai will never have to rely on outside sources. Ostriches and crocodiles provide interest for the tourists and a swimming pool is there for weekend visitors, especially for the children. It’s a delight to walk through the center and see the life and activity that goes on there every day.
At the entrance to Songhai, people sell eggs every morning, and the store is full of products that Songhai produces: jam and moringa powder, canned food, yogurt, bread and bakery goods and other staples for people from the city.
Songhai is not just words; it is a working agricultural center that trains youth and provides jobs, recycles everything, turns waste into usable compost for crops and energy, and even more than that, is a community of people working for a common goal. I could see it in the faces of the people who worked and lived there. They all had a desire to make something not only of themselves, but to make their families, farms, and countries, a better place to live.
Father Nzamujo is aware that what is accomplished at Porto-Novo, the home base of Songhai, is not sufficient for all the growing needs and requests for Songhai centers across the continent of Africa and beyond. He not only trains thousands of youth to help set up other sites, but he also has founded the Songhai Leadership Academy which chooses and encourages students to be the leaders of tomorrow. Songhai is not just an agricultural center lasting for a few years. It is a concept that will, with leadership and dedication of all involved, be carried on for many generations.
Songhai has worked with many other groups to help spread the message. They have worked with the United Nations Development Program, the World Food Program, the Mastercard Foundation, and the ministries of agriculture in many West African countries, to bring about this change.
Songhai is a solution to poverty in the region, a help in solving climate change, and a way of bringing peace, not conflict, to a world that so desperately needs hope for the future.
One of the many groups helping to make these changes is the Songhai Support Group, a 501 3c organization registered in the state of California.
Even though Songhai itself is self-sufficient, for it to expand and for its message to reach more of Africa, there are many projects that need funding. Training students to work in other sites, feeding them and housing them for the six months of training, opening new sites all across Africa- all these projects take additional funding. What I love is that when we contribute, we know exactly where our money is going, whether it’s for training new students, solar panels, new projects in Ghana or the Congo, or funding the expansion of the microbiology laboratory on site.
I’ve included a list of the new projects that Father Nzamujo has compiled for his future needs at Songhai, and we hope that they will interest you as they do many of us in the support group, to help make this world a kinder and more peaceful place.
