Wally Juwara is a young farmer from Kartong village, Kombo South in West Coast Region in The Gambia. He is engaged in agribusiness. Wally started his business after he was inspired by some youth of Casamance, Southern Senegal, during a visit there some years back.
Shortly after his return, he started his own garden of 90m x 30m where he planted orange trees and other fruit trees and vegetables. He has over 80 orange plants some seedlings that he intends to transplant in the near future in another 150m x 150m as at April, 2018.
‘I believe it is my responsibility to take part in the Agricultural Value Chain to provide healthy and fresh vegetables to the market’, he said. Since he started his business for over five years now, Juwara was able to settle his household needs and support his family.
Mr. Juwara also benefitted from GYIN Gambia’s Youth Mentorship Programme on Enterprise Management from September 2018 to March 2019. The Youth Mentorship Programme funded by the European Union (EU) through the Youth Empowerment Project YEP– www.yep.gm
The six months programme enrolled 50 youth and during the six months programme, youth were enabled to craft exceptional business structures, increase their management skills, and maximise streams of profit. It will also allow them to experience different business models in practice during the programme. https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/all-news-and-stories/50-gambian-youth-benefit-enterprise-management-mentorship_en
His main challenge us having a good market for his tomato production.
Currently, he needs a borehole to ease in the watering of the plants as he is currently using a neighbor’s well to fetch water which is labor intensive. A tomato processing machine is also in need to be able to transform and process the tomatoes into paste.
He also wants to do proper fencing of his garden to protect it from animal intrusion.