“When I was young, my father told me whenever I need something, especially during hunger, I must invest in tomatoes and onions.” Those are the words of former irrigation minister Mabior Garang.
When Radio Tamazuj visited Garang at his farm in Kenya, he said he decided to leave politics to focus on farming to earn handsomely from his farm and inspire the young people in South Sudan.
Mabior Garang de Mabior is the eldest son of South Sudan’s founding father, the late Dr John Garang de Mabior.
In this Q&A, Garang shares his experience as a farmer in neighbouring Kenya and advises young people to embark on farming to help fight poverty in South Sudan.
Q: Briefly, who is Mabior?
A: I am Mabior Garang de Mabior, son of the late Garang de Mabior; for those who do not know me, because, in South Sudan, people introduce themselves by referring to other well-known people. I am also the chairperson of the Board of a small NGO called National Conversion, registered in South Sudan and Kenya.
Q: Where did this idea of farming come from?
A: This idea came when I was still in politics in South Sudan. There was so much conflict, and I decided I did not want to be in politics anymore; I opted to be in the market.
When I came to Kenya, I found the market is very developed, and farmers in Kenya are supported and given the necessary skills. The government of Kenya has built the skills of Kenyan farmers, so for one to do farming in Kenya is very easy, but my heart is in our country. We want to do something in our country, but we see our farmers are still deficient in farming skills.
Q: What produce are you farming on your farm?
A: We have many things. What I am holding now is a pepper called habanero. I have another chilli called African Demon. So, these are some of the things we are doing here.
Q: How many tons of pepper are you making?
A: These can produce many tones. For example, one plant can stay up to three years producing, so it makes very many tons because it produces after every three months
Q: How much profit are you making from your agribusiness?
A: It differs. If we sell them fresh, it will be 50 Shillings per 1 kg, but when we process them, it will have value addition. We sell it up to 100 Shillings per 1 kg, so we are doing value adding. We sell fresh produce and process them in powder form and package them in tins, some are cooked and kept in chilli sauces, and we sell them out too, so one bottle is 400 shillings.
Q: Where is your market?
A: All of us are in the East African market as South Sudanese; we must think in a broader mind; we have a market in East Africa. Also, we have a market in the Middle East, which we can access through Sudan when there will be peace in South Sudan. We will benefit a lot, especially we South Sudanese from the East African market, Sudan market and the Middle East also.
Q: Have you quit politics? What is your status in terms of politics?
A: I am still in politics, and you know everything is politics because even when you want to get married, there is politics; everything has politics in it, but I cannot say that I am in the government or I have an interest in being in the government because the politics that is on the side of government, my heart is not for such kind of politics of backstabbing to get into power. No one is concerned about the interest of South Sudan.
Q: Why did you decide to venture into farming?
A: I got the idea of farming from our elders a long time ago in the liberation council. They had something we called the Civil Authority for new Sudan for South Sudanese citizens. They used to give food to our army, so farming is not unique for South Sudanese; it is something in our culture. I am just following our culture in South Sudan.
When I was young, my father told me whenever I need something, especially during hungry, I must invest in tomatoes and onions. So these things have a market throughout. You can start your business from zero through the growing of tomatoes.
So this is what I want to tell our youth: not everything must be related to the government, and not everyone can be in the government. What is the difference between politics and government? What is it? So this is what we are doing.
We have a company called Nile Valley Food; we registered in Kenya and South Sudan. But when you compare South Sudan and Kenya, it is not the same, so we brought something called National Conversation Youth Agricultural Firm so that we can build the farming skills of our youth in South Sudan so that they can reach the level of Kenyans so that our middle-class people can be able to do agribusiness in South Sudan.
Q: Do you think that many agribusinesses can be sustainable for farmers?
A: Yes, because agriculture has different levels; that is why I am saying that we must give the capacity building to our farmers because the economy starts from the farmers, and then we build from there. Our farmers are supposed to get money from the fresh products, and those who have the capacity can do value addition.
Q: Are you planning to train people in South Sudan? How will you support them?
A: Through National Conversation, we will support our farmers; we have over 20 groups of young farmers who have registered with us in the National Conversation in South Sudan, so we are going to teach them through youth agricultural firm capacity building.
Last time we did training for 15 youth groups who had registered with us that time, but this time there are more than 20 youth groups that we will be trained.
As you know many South Sudanese do not have refrigerators, and people in villages don’t have refrigerators, so on our website, the National Conversation, we asked our farmers to tell us some of their challenges. One of the things we found out is giving them a hard time is that there are no roads connecting the towns within rural areas, so most of the products don’t reach Juba. They get spoiled on the way, so we are going to show them ways how one can preserve food that can stay up to three years. The training is coming soon we are waiting to go to Juba so that we do this training.
Q: Where do you get support to train people?
A: The moderators of National Conversation are the first people who contribute to the support of the training of these groups, and sometimes we get from leaders who understand what we are doing. From time to time, they do give us support.
Our president promised to support us last time, and although we have not received anything yet, he said he would help us. He is happy with the work we are doing.
Also, we have our diaspora population. We thank them very much because they have supported us, and we hope they will continue supporting us more. They sent us money plus the money from our pockets as the moderators and some money we get from selling our products; all these are the money we get to support our work.
Q: How many employees do you have now?
A: I have four permanent employees, but we also have some people who come based on need, and they work as casual labourers on the farm.
Q: What are the main challenges facing you? And did you start farming?
A: I started with groundnuts, and this is what I want the people of South Sudan to know; it has been three years since I started farming. I am not an expert in agriculture; I have not been in the school of agribusiness or anything like that; everything we do, we are learning on the way.
It has been three years since the conflict started in the country. We said, let us go and learn this farming, so the first year; I started farming by putting down the seeds so that we find out what is going to happen because all this time, the colonizers had been telling us that groundnuts cannot grow in South Sudan, we know the weather in South Sudan and Kenya is the same. So we said let us try groundnuts here, now we have planted for the last three years. Now we have taken it to Nanyuki for processing into value addition.
The first year was for putting the seeds on the ground and learning how the farm produce will be taken to the market and how it will grow, and preservation methods, which is why for the three years, we want to go and share with our brothers back home.
Q: Many people ask why you quit politics to focus on farming. What can you tell them?
A: It is up to those people and how they think. If they think farming is not essential, I can tell them that agriculture is the most crucial sector in any civilization. I do not see farming as something for poor people. This is old thinking.
I am not in politics, I am farming, but Radio Tamazuj is looking for Mabior and asking what Mabior is doing. It shows there is power in farming; I do not see farming as something for the poor or people who do not know anything. The late Dr John Garang had a PhD in agriculture, so I want to tell our people that agriculture is the backbone of any country’s development, so I do not see it as something minor.
Q: What is your last message?
A: I do not want to say let all of us leave politics, but let us stop the idea of regime change because the regime change agenda came to our culture because, for a long time, we had been fighting for the independence of South Sudan. We had wanted to change the governments of Khartoum. This thing is in the South Sudanese minds that every time there must be regime change, and change of regime is not something easy.
If our people embark on agriculture, they will be able to get something that can help them to take their children to school. On the issue of regime change, people should take the regime change agenda out of their minds, so this is my message to all South Sudanese.