Agriculture Programme: Rural Livelihoods

Our agricultural support programme developed when our Sierra Leone programmes manager Karim was travelling through a rural community near his hometown of Lunsar. 

Subsistence farming and small scale family farming is very common in rural communities in Sierra Leone. Communities and families work hard to provide for their families and when possible, try to produce a little more to trade or sell locally.

In April 2022 we launched a comprehensive pilot programme across six communities in Moyamba and Koya, following 3 months of consultation with agricultural communities. The project supported five farmers in each community with the additional tools and seeds they needed - we call it a ‘yield’ booster as it allowed these farmers to grow additional crops which they could then sell on for a profit. 

In October 2022, each community also received a grant and training to develop organic compost and a seed storage facility, enabling the whole community to end their reliance on expensive and damaging fertiliser, boost their yields and start a seed bank.

The team

Mohamed, Agriculture programme coordinator

We aim for all our projects to be based on the knowledge and expertise of our staff and the people we are supporting as we believe that is the best way to design and deliver an impactful project.

Mohammed Conteh, our agricultural officer is now undertaking on-going monitoring and support which is essential to the success of the programme. For example, community representatives visited the Reseed office to discuss sourcing of quality of seeds, changing the seed disbursal timelines due to the rains starting early, and how they are managing to prepare their lands for planting during Ramadan.

Our impact in detail

900

people supported through our agriculture pilot

The compost training that we hosted across six communities in our pilot was far more popular than we could have ever imagined with 276 attendees, some even travelling from neighbouring villages to attend when they heard about it. This confirmed our understanding that soil degradation is a key challenge and so now we are seeking to expand that specific element of the wider programme due to demand.

For just £10 a month, you could support a whole community to set up their own composting and seed facility.