Exclusive Interview with Mais Afrika, by Cleber Lima Guarany, President of the International Center for Innovation and Agricultural Technology Transfer (CIITTA) and responsible for the development of FGV Europe projects for the tropical region of the planet.
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Green Imperative Nigeria: the project that can save the world.
One of the serious problems today, which the war in Ukraine has increased, is food in the world and in particular Africa's dependence on the rest of the world for food.
Another serious problem, and perhaps the most important nowadays, is the environment, in particular global warming and the way it affects Africa, the continent that pollutes the least (5%), but that suffers the most: drought, erosion, inundation and floods and especially in sub-Saharan regions.
In this context, Mais Afrika, taking advantage of the launch of its YouTube Channel, spoke with Cleber Lima Guarany, President of the International Center for Innovation and Agricultural Technology Transfer (CIITTA), about this and other pertinent matters.
In this interview, Cleber told us not only about his life path but also about the various projects he has been through and the current ones, their importance for local African populations and the replication of these projects in other African countries.
He also spoke of the importance of the “Green Imperative” pilot project in Nigeria and the way in which it can be applied throughout the tropical region, both in Africa and in South America and, of course, he spoke of the Amazon.
Watch the video with the entire interview, or if you prefer, read the full interview here.
The interview
MORE AFRIKA: Hi Cleber, it's a pleasure to be here with you. For starters and for our listeners to get to know you a little better, can you tell us who your current roles are and also tell us a little about the path that led you to become the person you are today?
CLG: Yes, well, first of all, good afternoon everyone. I currently occupy two roles, the first one being responsible for developing FGV Europa projects in the tropical region of the planet and FGV Europa is a Think Tank, the third largest in the world, it is a genuinely Brazilian institution, but it has a representation in Europe and is certainly the first in tropical agriculture.
The other role I hold is president of the international center for innovation and agricultural technology transfer (CIITTA), this center was created by FGV Europa in 2019 and its main objective is to support the transfer of technology and the dissemination of best practices in agriculture and environment for the tropical region of the planet and especially for the African continent.
I've been working for 20 years developing projects in these areas of agriculture and the environment, I've always been interested in the relationship between sustainable projects has always been our focus, that is, I've done projects that manage to generate wealth by themselves, by their own strengths in a way that people manage to develop these projects and provide a condition for them to survive and develop in the long term.
This also depends a lot on the productive arrangement, so we always try to establish a productive environment, no matter whether it is an association or a cooperative, or a local private initiative, but it is always important to establish solid foundations to guarantee stability in the current world, basically these are the two functions that I present.
MORE AFRIKA: Hi, good afternoon everyone. Well, at this moment, Cleber, you are the president of the international center for agricultural innovation and technology transfer, could you explain to us in a simple way what this center does?
CLG: This center, it is a recent center created in 2019 whose main objective is to bring technology transfer, capacity building and training for tropical agriculture in Africa, on the African continent, mainly in the Sub-Saharan area of Africa where we have languages similar to the language. Brazilian.
So we really believe that African agriculture can develop at a much higher speed through the introduction of new technologies and the introduction of sustainable agricultural practices, so this evolves training and capacity building, the center is located in Uberaba, in the city of Uberaba in Brazil .
It is a farm of approximately 1000 hectares with all the facilities to carry out training in capacity building and we also have a very experienced team of technicians and they move frequently to Africa, to also give this capacity building training back in the field, directly, to the farmers and to the operational structures that we understand to transpose.
MORE AFRIKA: You also work as project manager for the Getúlio Vargas role, can you elaborate a little more on your work at this renowned Foundation?
CLG: Yes, the Foundation, as I said, is a Think Tank and one of its main objectives is to think about development structures mainly for agriculture for the environment, mainly for agriculture for the environment, for other countries in particular for Africa, the Foundation basically has two key roles in this process.
First, it is the role of guaranteeing financial resources, so that the projects are properly implemented, what we have seen in recent years, especially on the African continent, is a series of projects that we call paper projects that are just reports and end up having financing difficulties.
They end up only in the project phase and do not go into implementation, so one of the obligations, one of the functions of the Foundation, which are several, is to carry out the financial operations of these projects.
With the countries with which we are working and with the international financial institutions, this structure is dismantled, enabling the implementation of projects, in addition it has another fundamental role which is to ensure the management of the good presentation of the project.
Our concern is that the projects are implemented as it was conceived and reach concrete results also when expected it can be a series of performance indicators that are established and a team established, our office in Germany in Cologne is able to make all the suggestion of implementation of the project.
MORE AFRIKA: Well, Cleber, as part of your work at Fundação Getúlio Vargas you are behind the Nigerian project, Green Imperative, a project that aims to boost Nigerian agriculture and increase food security in that country.
Could you explain to us, how did this project come about, what are the real benefits for Nigeria and if this project can be replicated or is it being replicated in other African countries?
CLG: The Green Imperative project, it emerged about four years ago in a partnership between the Brazilian government and the Nigerian government, the Foundation's responsibility is precisely to design the technically safe project and lay the foundations for management and implementation.
In this project, it has a fundamental role, which is to do all the training, capacity building and technology transfer in the technology transfer phase and, for example, in the experiences of high productivity seeds so that they can be replicated in Nigeria.
They are important parts of an agriculture program. With the Green Imperative, to see a very comprehensive project, it covers the entire country with a financial fundraising in the order of 9,2 billion dollars and it is relocated to increase the country's food security, in fact opening several value chains for agriculture it is based on the established business model as a service center.
In other words, they are, it is always, spread across the country that will have all the support and training training support of agricultural machinery and equipment for the maintenance of machines and technical assistance for pensioners.
Everything to give support to small farmers in this center, they will give this support directly to small farmers and at the same time to their production units.
These are private centers and obviously need their production, their generation of wealth to make the project sustainable in the long term, these projects with a sustainable layout, so this service center has the capacity to pay this structured financing and at the same time support small farmers who live there in the area of influence of this service center.
MORE AFRIKA: And is it being replicated in some other African countries?
CLG: Yes, this model has already been replicated in Mozambique. We are now taking countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon as another country that is something for us and for that model.
Because? This model has proved to be quite efficient, we also understand that the small farmer is often unable to operate the agricultural equipment, nor does he have the maintenance, or how he will maintain his tractor, buy fuel to start putting this to run.
And you have to have training and qualification not only tractors, but also equipment, so the service center has this role, it provides this agrarian location service, it offers support to the small farmer and offers training and qualification.
So we are able to focus on your service a whole structure for the maintenance of your equipment, for the distribution of these support, such as… seeds… biofertilizers, insecticides, to disseminate the best practices of Low Carbon Agriculture .
In other words, a service center that has all the knowledge organized and prepared seems to us to help small agriculture and I think it's something that, really, the African continent can start to establish a very interesting, very consistent production base once since it allows the small farmer to produce higher quality products.
MORE AFRIKA: This is very interesting… honestly.
Cleber, I'll be honest with you. Before this interview I did some research and I was impressed with his life career and his work is a person who has clearly dedicated his whole life to the environment and has already received recognition for this through the award “The best solution from Global South-South Development” , if I am not mistaken, it is a prize issued by the UN.
What was the impact of this award on your life and also on your work?
CLG: I wanted to say, for the whole team that works with me, isn't this recognition, like some awards that we give very important recognition in the life of an organization like the one I have with them, obviously we are very proud and it also serves as an incentive for the people continue the work.
The award was established mainly in our situation of creating a very objective and sustainable business model, in which its reach creates concrete impacts, so it is important that we do not carry out any project that depends on external resources forever, at some point, it has that self-support.
And we are once again able to perpetuate the benefits of these humanitarian projects and we always look for, in the case of agricultural production, projects with competitiveness in the domestic market.
So, we always look at the domestic market, especially Africa, which imports multi-products that we try to produce products internally, to compete in price and quality with these imported products, which, if not like that, are not sustainable.
In terms of the environment, the other area in which we work a lot, for example, a few years ago we carried out a study for the government of Guinea-Bissau and understood the biological assets related to fishing so that they also become sustainable, we know that this country is a country that has very interesting natural resources in fishing.
They are constantly being invaded by boats from other countries without permission and they end up removing this wealth without any counterpart for Guinea-Bissau, so we developed an initial study to value this biological asset.
Remunerate it, remunerate the country and make it sustainable so that it is executed in a sustainable way and that generates foreign exchange and resources for the country itself to invest in other areas, so this is also another example of environmental projects.
So I must say that this award ended up crowning our initiative of always thinking about projects with sustainability.
MORE AFRIKA: This is quite interesting indeed.
In general, he has been active in a very active way and, as he explained to us, in projects related to the environment and agriculture, both in Brazil and in Latin America and in Africa, he can give us an overview of how these two continents have interacted in the looking for a better environmental solution for everyone?
CLG: Yes, without a doubt, when we think of Brazil, we think of Africa, we find many similarities, not only in the cultural aspect, but also in the environmental aspect.
We have languages that are very similar to African languages, Brazil as everyone knows 60 years ago was a country that imported food, received international aid, it was an important moment, but it made a decision, 50, 60 years ago, to invest heavily in agriculture and invest mainly in capacity building, training and technology transfer.
This made it possible for us to take a very interesting leap, making the country today a major food exporter to the world.
Remembering that today Brazil is seen as a great exporter of meat, corn and cotton, in short, the great commodities, but we also have a very strong relationship with Family Agriculture, practically 80% of the food that goes to the table of Brazilians today, is from family farming.
It is a very large series of investigations, practically we managed to develop cultures in a tropical climate that seemed impossible to be developed.
For example, I was recently, now last week, in a region here in Brazil, producing high quality olive oil and this production is growing.
Brazil was an olive oil importer from all over the world so now they produce their own olive oil because they have the environment for it, in the tropical climate.
Another example is wheat. Brazil was a great importer, now in three years it will become a great wheat exporter.
We have developed, through Embrapa, an important research investigation and participate in the cycle of wheat varieties for tropical agriculture.
Today we produce wheat, 10 tons per hectare, with excellent quality and can be applied in Africa.
I mean, this war in Ukraine that highlighted this problem of wheat in the world since Ukraine is a big producer of wheat.
There is a solution, I think, since we are discussing with several countries, such as Nigeria, of starting wheat production in Africa, which practically imports 100% to 90% of the wheat it consumes.
These are very valuable examples of cooperation that we are looking for on the African continent, we have a very similar climate, so the solutions that we have developed in the last 50 years, logically with some adaptations, can be applied perfectly to the African continent.
So we work with projects, logically with Low Carbon Agriculture, regenerative agriculture with the introduction of conservation practices, we already know this soil, the climate and the relief, as I said, similar to ours, we always try to apply no-tillage techniques, nitrogen fixation in the soil, fertilizer action.
These are all techniques that we call conservation techniques that meet today's global objective of low carbon emissions in our activities.
Regarding the conservation of forests and recovery of ecosystems, an issue that concerns us a lot, there is also a great similarity, we have tropical forests like Africa, we still have tropical forests, we have our cerrado, which is like the Savannah of Africa.
And then, we have scientific methodologies in the administration of carbon credits and measurement of the benefits of the system that a project of this type of recovery and maintenance of ecosystems can bring.
So these are examples in a mass of knowledge that we are putting a lot with the African continent and I think we can bring to the productive part of this cooperation in the practical world.
MORE AFRIKA: Cleber, one of the projects you are currently collaborating with is the sustainable landscapes of the Amazon. Can you explain to us what this project consists of?
CLG: Yes, this project is sponsored by the GEF: Global Environmental Facility, with the participation of the World Bank and Fundação Getúlio Vargas.
Fundação Getúlio Vargas is responsible for the financial administration of the project and the technical administration.
It is focused on the Amazon biome and aims to protect ecosystems and develop structures that bring sustainability to projects.
Currently, 20 million dollars are being invested in various areas with the aim of always developing models that can then have the strength to replicate.
These are very pragmatic projects, a commitment to seek concrete results for the Amazon region.
There are a series of performance indicators that are measured, actions in the field are implemented, together with the local communities.
It is a very interesting project, the social movement is quite large and the results will start to appear and we can already establish some parameters to be equipped in the region.
MORE AFRIKA: To conclude this part of the interview, I would like to ask one last question, a question, on a topic that is considered controversial by some. Do you agree that the environment is at risk and that we are heading towards global warming? If so, in your personal opinion, is it possible to stop this warming and how can we do it.
CLG: There is no doubt that human intervention is altering the planet's environment, I believe there is no longer any doubt about it.
There are many scientific studies proving that human intervention is really altered and, these data, which were demonstrated at the last COP in Glasgow, there is no way to avoid this.
It is a problem that in fact we have and humanity needs to act quickly to change this reality. It is not easy, it is a very big challenge.
But I usually say that it may be the first Global challenge for humanity and that, hopefully, will serve as a pretext to unite humanity more in a single objective, because if we do not intervene to improve this situation, the impacts will undoubtedly already are coming and will be aggravated in the coming years.
And it is interesting to note that the area of our vision, the area of the planet that can contribute the most to change this reality is precisely the tropical area of the planet where there are concrete possibilities to take actions to protect the remaining forests and recover ecosystems.
We have a series of projects that we are executing, for this area of the planet, we know that it is important to act quickly because we have several partner institutions there that share with us this urgency and this similarity of biomes that I mentioned, between Brazil and Africa, I think we can directly contribute to a very interesting recovery.
Of course, I was going to draw attention, of all these projects the most important is what we call S, the social, so it is essential to involve local communities to achieve the success of these projects.
For us, when we work on the development of food production, aiming to increase the food security of countries, simultaneously with the protection of forests and the recovery of ecosystems, this is perfect.
It is a powerful combination because you are involving the local community, involving the social, creating jobs through food production and at the same time you are working for awareness and actions for the protection of remaining forests and the recovery of degraded ecosystems.
MORE AFRIKA: Cleber, I want to thank you for granting us this interview, but before we say goodbye, we would like to issue you a challenge. As part of this series of interviews, we asked our interviewees to choose from our website, Mais Afrika, a recently published piece of news and comment on it.
The news you chose was about a 63-year-old woman, a farmer, who won an extremely important prize. This news was published on the 2nd of July.
Cleber, can you first explain to us why you chose this news and then, as you were challenged, comment on it?
CLG: Well, the news caught my attention, a news that deals with the Leadership Training Forum for Women in Food and Agriculture, sponsored by the AgriHouse Foundation, in Ghana.
This news for me, the two points that caught my attention and I was quite happy, was the first one, in relation to the participation of women. It praises the participation of women in agriculture and we know the importance of this participation.
We have worked with more than 25 countries in Africa and we see this importance in practically all of these countries, not only for women, I would add, but also for young people, so rewarding the participation of these women, for me, is something very emblematic and important.
Another source that caught my attention in this news was training and capacity building for the development of African agriculture.
We believe that this is a fundamental point, like Brazil, which is a concrete case, established that it was established 50 years ago, without training, without capacity building, without technology transfer, it will be impossible to develop agriculture in Africa.
Quickly, I would just like to mention crises that I have seen, several countries, many countries, importing machines and equipment and then these machines and equipment, either end up wearing out due to lack of maintenance or are stopped due to lack of trained and qualified operators.
So the appeal that we always make to all governments, when they buy machines and equipment, is that they never forget to buy the whole package, buy the training, buy the technology transfer, buy the training too, because this will really guarantee the production of more food.
Otherwise, money is simply wasted, such important financial resources are wasted and that people know that at the present time in the world they are scarce on the African continent.
It's worth what we always do. Consider a training package, always thinking about a new term, there is no point in training for six months, this has to be a constant, in Nigeria, for example, we have a 10-year agreement to work in the country with training for training, this is which will ensure the success of agriculture in Africa.
MORE AFRIKA: I would like to thank you for your participation, Cleber, your time, we know that you are an extremely busy person, I would also like to thank Mais Afrika, for putting Brazil on the road with Africa and all our followers and, who knows, see you soon.
CLG: Thank you, Vanessa Thank you Francisco, see you soon.
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Picture: © 2022 Francisco Lopes-Santos