**2. The Songhai approach**

*Regional Development in Africa*

of the world's children are stunted [11].

of homelessness on our planet [12].

as wind and solar energy [13].

most likely that those without access to an improved water source are likely also to lack access to improved sanitation. The consequences of the unavailability of these two critical needs are evinced in numerous diverse negative ways: an estimated 801,000 children younger than 5 years of age perish from diarrhea each year, mostly in developing countries, or about 2200 children are dying everyday as a result of (preventable) diarrheal diseases [7]; worldwide, millions of people are infected with neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), many of which are water- and/or hygienerelated, such as *Guinea worm disease*, *Buruli ulcer*, *trachoma*, and *schistosomiasis*, and are found in places with unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation [8]. Clearly, the impact of clean water technologies on public health has a high rate of return, reduc-

In terms of food, close to 800 million people do not have sufficient food to lead a healthy, active life, while over a third of produced and processed food is wasted! Needless to say, the vast majority of the hungry live in developing countries, where as many as one in eight people are undernourished and hence unable to flourish. Two thirds of these are from Asia, and, while the percentage in southern Asia has reduced, an increase has also seen in recent years in western Asia, due to conflict and war. The negative impact of lack of food is profound: nearly half of deaths in children under 5, almost 3.1 million a year, are a direct result of poor nutrition. More than 100 million children in developing countries are underweight, and one in four

Over 1.6 billion people, almost one out of every four, on this planet lack adequate housing and shelter as estimated by Habitat for Humanity, while there are over 150 million people in the world who are completely homeless. India has the most homeless people in the world with almost 70 million homeless, while another 170 million are "almost homeless." The tenuous and shaky, literally, nature of the housing of those with inadequate shelter puts these individuals and families at high risk of being added to the roll of homeless, potentially dramatically increasing the level

Nearly 1.1 billion people had no access to electricity in 2014, and more than 3 billion had no access to clean fuels and clean fuel cookstove technologies, despite the fact that these technologies have been widely researched, developed, and promulgated with numerous alternative designs developed and implemented in terms of cookstove design and fuel type being promoted by numerous development agencies and NGOs. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 recognizes that extending access to electricity and other forms of energy is fundamental to improving people's lives and communities. As recently as 2016, only 10% of the energy consumed on the planet was coming from renewable and sustainable sources such

Now, in the globalized world of the twenty-first century, access to the Internet and the World Wide Web of information and communication has become a basic need that is critically necessary to build community capacity. However, only about half of the world's population is online. There are about 4.4 billion people with access to the Internet and World Wide Web, bringing the percentage of people with Internet access above the 50% mark. And as in the areas of water, sanitation, shelter, and energy, there are enormous discrepancies in terms of access, speed of connection, bandwidth, and quality of access. In the developed world, over 80% of people have broadband Internet access, while in the developing world, it is closer to half or just over 50% of people with Internet access. This does not drill down into the speed and bandwidth available. In the most connected country on earth with the highest number of Internet users, China with over 750 million users still has more than 40% of the population unconnected. In India, with almost 700 million Internet users, almost half of the population has no Internet connection [14].

ing morbidity from diarrhea and other water-borne diseases [9, 10].

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This is where the Songhai Center and the agroecological approach [15, 16] provide a radical rethinking of the conventional top-down, external agency-supported development practices of the twentieth century. The Songhai approach involves integrated and community-based sustainable technology research, development, implementation, transfer, and dispersion. This model forms the structural and existential fabric of the Songhai approach to development. This is where the three Rs of the twentieth century, limited to reduce, reuse, and recycle, have effectively, holistically, and successfully been expanded to a true twenty-first century model of multiple Rs, incorporating *r*espect for the environment, *r*adical *r*ethinking of our approach, and an ethos of *r*ecovery where waste is *r*econceptualized as *r*esource and a true circular economy becomes possible.

What we will here call the Songhai approach is self-defined and identified as a rural growth initiative than that is an alternative sustainable development model that promulgated by multilateral aid and development agencies which tend to be a top-down interventionist and have, at best, simply failed at achieving development targets and, at worst, resulted in actual underdevelopment and increased dependency [17]. The development focus and attention in decolonizing Africa were on the maintenance and expansion of the infrastructure that would enable newly independent African nations to grow, harvest, and transport fresh agricultural produce or extract, transport, and export raw mineral resources, the processing and value addition to both (agricultural produce and mineral resources) of which would occur in the industrialized Global North. The development that took place in the former colonies, as well as the infrastructure that was put in place, ensured that this export of raw materials and agricultural produce would be maintained and expanded. The long-term result of that focus has been the impoverishment of many African nations, brought about by the depletion of resources, the transformation to monoculture cash crops, and the wanton, unrestricted, and unregulated exploitation and extraction of resources, enabled through the corrupt and undemocratic regimes that enriched themselves at the cost of national development through these regime collusions with former colonial governments and their multinational corporate partners.

Multilateral and international aid agencies tend to view poverty as a symptom that can be treated through some directed intervention, whether that intervention is focused on providing clean water through the installation of a pump or the establishment of a rural health clinic and expecting these directed and very often uncoordinated interventions to result in fundamental change that has at its core the empowerment of communities through the integrated development of the community's capacities and capabilities. The Songhai analysis sees the succumbing of Africa to the logic of poverty and underdevelopment caused by the loss of internal, some would argue organic, capacity "…to build the appropriate institutions

and structure that will enable us to consistently unleash the appropriate creative and organizational forces to produce the social values, goods and services that correspond to our needs and desires" [15]. The loss of this capacity breeds passive consumerism and the adoption of piecemeal solutions, other people's experiences, systems of production, as well as values as the cheaper, quicker substitute, instead of doing the hard work necessary to have indigenously and endogenously developed relevant solutions that are authentic, holistic, and sustainable.

Having correctly identified the multiple crises that face development in Africa, including food security, poverty, demographic transitions, youth unemployment, and environmental challenges, and recognizing that these are all connected and interdependent, the Songhai vision has been underscored by understanding the problem as systemic, requiring an integrated and holistic approach. The integration and holistic conceptualization was hypothesized to result in and enable synergy and sustainability. In the African rural context, where agriculture is the main and core human activity, this agroecological initiative and approach should reverse the logic of poverty in a sustainable manner.

Undergirding the Songhai approach is the development of the human capacity for authentic, holistic, and thus sustainable development. The program for human capacity development must be well-designed and coherent, integrating authentic technologies as well as enabling environments, which together would be required to guarantee sustainable, broad-based, and inclusive growth and development on the African continent. The human resource development program is designed to grow and maintain a new human resource base with a fundamentally new culture and capacities that are aligned with the socioeconomic realities of today and tomorrow. The Songhai Center's human development program is aimed at developing socioeconomic leaders who can implement and operate sustainable rural growth programs throughout Africa [15, 16]. Leading sustainable rural development programs requires an awareness of the integrated nature of rural environments involving crosscutting and interrelated dynamics among a diverse resource base, engaging polyvalent personnel and interdependent structures and organizations. Thus, the business model that is employed is essentially a call for dynamics and orientations that go broader and deeper than previous attempts at development, which means a radical shift that combines environmental, scientific, technical, social, and economic orientations. This combination must be both latitudinal, across areas of emphasis, but also longitudinal, from production to consumption; the continuum begins with resource extraction or cultivation followed by processing and transformation into value-added products and services. Given the agricultural context, the approach has to be systemic and multifunctional, which will insure food and nutrition security and health, but also increase household income, all in a sustainable manner.

Implemented in this framework, integrated agroecological rural development can become, as it were, a weapon of mass construction. Providing the relevant ecological literacy to the youth of a community can empower and capacitate them to develop and deploy appropriate technologies that are aligned with this new vision. The vision has to have a core, enabling institutional framework to foster skill development, as well as the generation and sharing of technologies that are relevant to the rural communities the youth inhabit.

In the Songhai model [17, 18], agriculture is holistically conceptualized to promote the biological processes in which investments can focus the development of environmental and biological capitals that facilitate agricultural systems to operate effectively and efficiently in a systemic and synergistic manner. At the fundamental (biomass and bioenergy) level, Songhai processes effectively manage the flows of energy and biomass within the whole system to create new and better

**75**

*The Songhai Agroecological Sustainable Development Model: Synergy, Symbiosis, Collaboration…*

biological capitals. Hence, agriculture is multidimensional and multifunctional and enhances production cycles and pathways by producing food in sufficient quantities to promote health, enhancing the environment in terms of soil quality. This provides a framework for green rural communities and builds sustainability and biodiversity. The system also concurrently provides raw materials for agro-industry and feedstocks for renewables, and in so doing, the system creates employment for

The holistic approach provides the rational for an integrated production system, where crop production, livestock production, and aquaculture-based production are all centered around and connected through the *bioenergy* that all three areas of production require as well as produce. This regenerative approach enables the creation of new biological capitals while breaking the cycle of poverty stemming from the scarcity that can lead to socioeconomic conflicts, through the effective recycling and management of bioenergy and biomass, now integrated into a virtuous cycle of

This integrated production system is holistic, so that it also is embedded in the rural and peri-urban communities, linking primary production to marketing services, and the small and medium enterprises based in the community, all of which are connected through the centrality of innovative and sustainable technology contributing to all stakeholder's in the environment. Primary production includes crops, livestock, aquaculture-based fisheries, as well as specialty items that pertain to specific geographic locales and environments. Marketing and services include retail, restaurants, and food exports. Small and medium enterprises are focused on value-added processing, which could include food processing or materials process-

At the Songhai Centers, this approach necessitated the redesign of production and development systems based on this new understanding of the integrated and interdependent nature of agriculture—engaging a broad and holistic appreciation of cyclic biomass and bioenergy flows with human ecosystems. The Center also focuses on increasing the entrepreneurial and production capacity of youth through functional training coupled with the appropriation and deployment of authentic and sustainable technologies. The Center assists youth in the incubation, seeding, and support of the development and launching of commercially viable enterprises. Across all this, the amelioration of environmental degradation and the preservation of environmental quality to ensure future generations inherit a healthier and less compromised envi-

**3. Integrated production system: symbiosis and synergy**

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87929*

youth and builds household income.

biological capital regeneration.

**supplementarity**

ing for small-scale manufacture and construction.

ronment than currently extant is the undergirding thematic [15, 16].

**4. Organization of the Songhai Center: complementarity and** 

The Songhai business model has articulated five components to deliver its mission. The model builds on a foundation of symbiosis and synergy in the ecosystem and articulates a framework based on complementarity and supplementarity. First and foremost, it is a cultural reorientation and training center where ecological literacy is foundational, and the emerging world view, concepts, and principles from modern science, combined with the implications for economic and social organizations, is inculcated into youth from the community. Second, the Center serves as a technology park, where new technologies and organizational structures *The Songhai Agroecological Sustainable Development Model: Synergy, Symbiosis, Collaboration… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87929*

biological capitals. Hence, agriculture is multidimensional and multifunctional and enhances production cycles and pathways by producing food in sufficient quantities to promote health, enhancing the environment in terms of soil quality. This provides a framework for green rural communities and builds sustainability and biodiversity. The system also concurrently provides raw materials for agro-industry and feedstocks for renewables, and in so doing, the system creates employment for youth and builds household income.
