too bad Executive Outcomes went out of business...
Posted on 03/05/2006 9:27:34 AM PST by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
(SNIP) Graham Hatty has already been up for hours. Bouncing in his Indian-made jeep down a track that borders his property, Hatty points out a pair of kestrels gliding on a breeze, and a flock of Abyssinian rollers sweeping across the brightening sky. "It's a bird watcher's paradise," says the 66-year-old Zimbabwean farmer. But Hatty has more on his mind than nature viewing. He pulls alongside a dozen Nigerian laborers packing burlap sacks with maize. The farmer runs his fingers through the yellow kernels, and draws back in revulsion: the bag is infested with weevils, gnatlike bugs that can quickly destroy a whole crop. "We'll have to fumigate the maize to get rid of these pests," he says. "I haven't seen these insects before in Nigeria. We've got a lot to learn here."
The learning curve has been steep since Hatty and a dozen other white farmers fled Zimbabwe last year to restart their lives in the Nigerian bush. The 13 men were among 4,000 whites who lost their farms in a disastrous land-reform program initiated six years ago by President Robert Mugabe. Now Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, is harnessing the expertise of these Zimbabwean castoffs to revive Nigeria's commercial agriculture, which has fallen into ruin since the country became a major oil producer in the 1960s. It is still too early to assess the results, but Obasanjo's experiment is spreading. Dispossessed white farmers have settled in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Uganda. In Nigeria, 20 more farmers from Zimbabwe will soon take over land in both Kwara and the region around Abuja, Nigeria's capital; 75 others are on the waiting list. "You can plant anything here and it grows," (SNIP) "If it gets itself together, Nigeria could feed Africa."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Ping
Out of the Zimbabwean frying pan into the Nigerian Islamist fire.
These farmers would be welcome here in the U.S. Of course, there's the matter of political-correctness and the usual cries of racism from the left.
Well, thank God it was only a "disastrous land-reform program". Here I was worried that it was a racist violation of human rights...
Consider this. Anyone with a shred on sense left Zim 20 years ago. Do you think these people have ANY sense? Do we need more idiots? I propose no. (SA Expat since 78)
That's what I was thinking. I suspect that the Nigerian govt. will protect them for now.
Once they have the agriculture booming in Nigeria, the Muslims will kick them out and take over. Then Nigeria will starve, too.
What, is farming genetic? Are white people the only ones who can do it?
You can be assured that the Nigerian frying pan will not contain a pork product.
If anyone wants to invest in Nigerian Agribusiness, I have an excellent investment contact in Nigeria. He writes to me often.
I don't think the beautiful white girl who wants me to pay her Nigerian hotel bill so she can leave the country is really cut out for farming.
-
too bad Executive Outcomes went out of business...
It hasn't been easy for anybody to leave that cesspool with any more than the shirt on his back, for a very, very long time.
From "The Switzerland of Africa" to just one more thoroughly African failure in a quarter-century.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
It hasn't been easy for anybody to leave that cesspool with any more than the shirt on his back, for a very, very long time.
Africa feeding Africa ? Now there's a thought.
It will be sweet revenge if Mugabe has to import food from Nigeria in the next few years!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.