Okay everyone, welcome back, I hope you had a nice coffee break. Let's continue with the next presentation session. I would like to welcome up three PhD candidates, Merisia Wilson, Messia Iomo and Mohamed Samkunde to present, and you will present your new projects under the Engage Programme, which means Welcome Up and Gender in Agribusiness Entrepreneurship, which is a joint program between the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Good morning everyone, I'm Merisia Wilson, I've been introduced from the University of Dar es Salaam and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and my studies on gender and rural entrepreneurship in the agricultural value chain, and I'm looking on citrus fruit value chain actors in one of the region in Tanzania, known as Tanga, and on the background picture, that's me, my husband and my brother in one of our family citrus fruit farm, you can now understand why I'm interested in citrus fruits, and as for most of developing countries, as it has been said, agriculture, the main state of Tanzania economy, as approximately 80% of the population depends on small-scale agriculture for their livelihood, and the labor forces are as women-intensive as women comprises more, like 54% of the labor force employed in the agricultural sector. At the title suggests my focus is citrus fruit in Tanga. Why Tanga? Because Tanga region is the leading citrus fruit producer in Tanzania, with the productivity of about 22.4 and 10 per hectare of citrus fruits. But the interest of the water attracted me in Tanga, which this is the map of Tanzania, and the neighboring country, and the Tanga region is here across the Indian Ocean, and here is the Islam, the main city, and the Doma, and other region. Water attracted me in Tanga that despite that citrus fruit production is among the core economic activities, but women participation, cost as a spoken about a gender issue. The women participation in citrus fruit value chain is very minimal, like despite the opportunities which are perceived to be in the citrus fruit value chain, but women do not take part in the value chain. So I developed an interest to understand why women are not participating in the citrus fruit value chain. Then drawing from literatures on gender and entrepreneurship, I came to understand that one of the key factor which India women participation in the value chain are the gender norms and the practices in the specific context. But some other literature also suggests that entrepreneurial processes or entrepreneurship, which can be engaged in the value chain, can assist these women of the particular context to challenge their the structures of the value chain which are male-dominated. So if women can engage in entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial processes within value chain and come up with the innovative ways, then they can challenge the barriers which have gendered position them in the value chain. So based on these two propositions and the observed minimal participation, I developed the objective of my studies. So generally, the aim of my studies to explore and analyze the impact of gender norms and practices on women participation in citrus fruit value chain and the resulting counter solution of entrepreneurial processes. And specifically, I'll be looking at the first objective will be to assess the gendered participation in citrus fruit like the typology of women in the citrus fruit where do women who are the women in the value chain and what are they doing. Then I'll explore how the prevailing gender norms and practices determine the position of the women along the chain. The position occupied along the chain by women, how are they related to the gender norms? Like if more are in the production, are there gendered factors placing them there? Or if they are in a certain node, what are the relationship between the position and the gender? Then I'll analyze how women position along the chain, fairing in relation to men in terms of the costing card benefits received as they received from participation along the chain. Like how now do women compare it to men fairing in terms of the costing card benefit derived the position because literature suggests that most of women take part in the low paying nodes of the value chain. So I'm going to analyze that too. And last, the last objective is to develop the understanding on how women actors working with citrus fruit engagement in entrepreneurial processes challenge the existing structure in the value chain. Like how now do those women who engage in entrepreneurial activities can challenge the structures? Like how do they provoke the existing structure? How is entrepreneurship developing the agents or increase the women agents to participate and challenge the patriarchal in the system? By the way, I'll take into account other contextual issues such as gender ethnicity and other social norms and practices because these factors apart from gender affect because there is always be a difference between youth decision on entrepreneurship and adult decision. So our age also matter. That's why we are here as youth because we define decision making. So in summary, because we have only a few minutes, this will be there. My study and thank you for listening. Thank you very much for this platform. My name is Mohammed Semkunde from the University of Dar es Salaam. I'm doing my PhD and I engage program which is funded by CEDA. My topic is the agents of women rights producer groups on rural entrepreneurship processes for market access in Tanzania. In the background, I start looking at the location, population, economy and gender. So Tanzania is located in eastern part of Africa. It is bordered by Kenya to the north, Kenya and Uganda, Indian Ocean to the east, Mozambique and Malawi south, Republic Democrats of Congo, Zambia, Rwanda and Burundi to the west. It is approximately having a population of 45 million in which 51% is female while the rest is male. Agriculture is the main state of the economy. It employs for nearly, for more than 50% of the population. And in the rural areas, it employs for more than 80%. And it is rural based kind of agriculture. Rice is the second important food crop which is cultivated in Tanzania. It is mostly used as a food crop for the people of urban and for the people of the rural areas, they use it as a commercial crop and food as well. Women are the majority in agricultural production. About 54% of the women engage in agriculture production while the rest is for men. But also this varies across the nodes in the value chain. Going to the production, you find a lot of females taking to nearly 80% of production while as you move with the value addition, the number of women is reduced. However, gender norms, values, practices limit to women access to sustainable market because they get involved in production, a big number of women in production, but when it comes to going to the market places, their role is reduced. And there has been analytical attention towards collective actions for women in most of developing countries, Tanzania being also one of the case study. So, however, there has been a very little explanation of connection between women producer groups or women groups collective actions with entrepreneurship in developing countries. So that being the case, my study has the following objectives. The overall objective of the study is to increase our understanding of the agents of women producer groups in rural entrepreneurship processes for market access in Tanzania. And specifically, this study is going to address the following. The first one is to describe the agents of the producer groups in accessing markets in rural settings of Tanzania, but also the other markets. The second one is to explain how agents works in women producer groups with regard to rural entrepreneurial processes. How will the group facilitate rural entrepreneurial processes in Tanzania? And the last one is to discuss and our analyze on how women producer group provoke gender norms, values and practices. As I said before, we have a lot of gender norms, values and practices that limit women to access a market, profitable markets. So then this study wants to look on the group when the women are in groups, is it helpful for them to break through those gender norms and value? And my study is going to use mixed method approach where survey, interviews, focus group discussion and observation will be used. Thank you very much for listening. Okay, good morning. Yeah, my name is Messier Elomo from University of Darisam, Tanzania, and now I'm based at SLU in Uppsala. And I'm in this PhD project under the Engage project, which is funded by CIDAS, said by my colleagues. In terms of what I do in my PhD project is looking at gender and functional upgrading in the rice value chain. And just to give you a brief, if we talk of the value chain, of course, we have different actors. Of course, the input supplier, the farmer, the trader, the processor up to the consumer. But then literature has been very clear in terms of women being all dominating the lower value chain nodes, particularly farming. And there are very few in the higher value chain nodes, including the processing and and and trading. And it is also clear that in the literature that farming gives them little in terms of the benefits from the value chain. And there's also a lot of literature trying to highlight the challenges or the constraints that women are facing. And then so the question is, if women are in farming, is there a possibility that they can move to other value chain nodes, where they can get better share or share, which is an implication on the on the livelihood of these of these actors, but not only women, but also men, because there are also men that are constrained in terms of moving to the higher value chain nodes, in other words, not just being stuck in the farming and then moving to the other nodes. And some literatures also shows that there is some relationship between gender relation and the ability of women and men actors to participate, but also to move to the higher value chain nodes in the value chain. And of course, in it, there are opportunities in that case for women and and men, which might be different, but also challenges. And of course, it's also very clear that women have more challenges in terms of resources in terms of decision making. And therefore, they're constrained in terms of ability to move to the higher value chain nodes. And some studies establishes that gender relation influences that movement. But also, when they move to the higher value chain nodes, that also has an influence on the gender relation. So is a is a two way kind of relationship between the gender lesions, including norms and practices and their function upgrading. And therefore, so, yeah, so the number of questions that this study wants to address, or at least to answer, one is how the rice value chain is organized. And there, of course, we will capture issues including gender roles and responsibilities. And then secondly, is what are the functional upgrading opportunities and challenges for women and and men actors. And of course, the focus of this study will will be all will be done in one area called Kira, which is the area that is important in terms of rice production. And then this study will also try to establish a two way relationship between gender lesions and function upgrading in the rice value chain. And then lastly, it's also trying it will also address or try to answer what are the entrepreneurial strategies that are pursued by women and men when they face challenges or constraints as they try to function upgrade along the rice value chain. So and then in terms of the methodology, this is going to use Kestad design, where we will consider those that are successful, who have been able to function upgrade less successful and those who have failed. Yeah, so it is going to be more of interviews, observation and focus group discussion. Thank you. Once again, I'd love to recognize our two or four coordinators. We have them here, two of our engaged coordinators. We have your Hannah and we have opera at the back. So those are part of the engaged project where we are three. Sorry. Yes, yes. I was wondering how far ahead are you in your in your thesis? And when do you think you would have some results? I can answer that briefly. Right now I'm developing a proposal. So I'm here to start the field work. And the field work might start around September this year. Yeah. Thank you very much, all three of you. Super interesting projects. Happy to hear how it goes. Next up. Did we have any more clarifying questions, by the way? No. Let's move on to the next speaker, Yana Perevoshikova. She is the representative for the Russian section of Y-Part, which is the global network for young professionals in for agricultural development. Welcome. Thank you very much. I would like to thank all the organizers for inviting me and thank you for your participation and your attention. Let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Yana Perevoshikova. I'm from St. Petersburg, Russia. Nowadays, I work and live in Italy. I work as export manager for Beol Kim company. This is the producer of fertilizers. And as a volunteering project, I'm engaged with BIPARD and I'm a WIPAD Russian representative. So today I have this great opportunity to introduce a WIPAD network for you. What is WIPAD? WIPAD is a movement for use by use for use and for agricultural development. Why do we need WIPAD and what it is? It is an international network. It is not a formal institution, but it is a network for WIPADians under 40s years older. We consider these young people, so we have quite optimistic approach to the age because later on we will see some slides and today we were talking already about the ageing of population of people involved in agricultural development. So 40s considered quite young. Then it is a global online and offline communication and discussion platform. And the aim of it is to enable young professionals involved in agricultural development all over the world to communicate and to realize their full potential and contribute towards innovative agricultural development. And why it was created? Because sometimes you do a lot of work at their organizations, but their opinion is not considered like a very important one because they're quite inexperienced members. Sometimes they can't give their voice. They don't have enough possibility to participate in a lot of conferences, events. So they used to make some kind of passive performance and silent performance. Therefore, the movement aims to change this situation. At the same time, as it was mentioned today, use a case to hold those for sustainable agriculture and for development of agriculture because it is made for them. So the movement will help is helping to participate, to commit to make a part of different conferences, different debates, and to talk, to make their voice heard. So it's like to make people involved more and to make them talk about their opinions and their views. Because also young professionals, they can doubt the current methods, which most commonly used. They have a good computer skills. They can have some innovation, an innovative opinion. So it's important to also to consider them in agricultural development. This we can see an example of Senegal, but it is valid for all over the world for the aging of agriculture of population in different organizations. And we can see that most of the specialists who work there are from 51 to 60 years old. So in 10 years, they will be retired. And then there is a problem that there are not enough youth people involved. So they don't have the possibility to transfer their experiments to others to use. And we are going, we can lose it this valuable experience. This slide I stole from Costa's presentation. And he has already explained this for you about the US projections. And now I will underline our movement, what the ViPAD activities is focused mainly on four objectives. First of all, it's to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge among your professionals, the professionals of different disciplines all around agriculture, but someone like, I don't know, more specialized in marketing, someone in the farmers of different countries. It is international movement. So there is a great possibility to exchange and to share the experience. Then we try to broaden the opportunity for young professional to contribute to strategic agricultural development policy debates. And it is easier for us when we are the movement and we are in group to present our opinion, to participate in the conferences. We promote agriculture among young people, also by giving them information about the opportunities which are in this sector. We promote and make this measure like more attractive for them, like an interesting career pass. And to facilitate access to resources and capacity-building opportunities. Because we organize some programs and also on the regional and on global level to help us to build up the necessary skills, like entrepreneurial skills, like policy, like public speaking skills and different others. Here is the use, as I told before, they come from different organizations. It can be universities, private sectors, farmers, NGOs, government agency from different majors. The structure for our organization, the following, the global coordination unit is hosted by Gikvara Global Forum for Agricultural Research and it is based at FAU Headquarter in Rome. Regional offices are based in different institutions, as you see on the map, but this is just... Also we have a lot of people participating online. We have different country representatives. Like I represent Russia, there are people who represent Sweden, Kirlin, for example, and different others. And of course, there are a lot of members who participate online and also some events offline. And we are supported by, mainly by SDS and also by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We have different partnerships and also we are looking for expand them. So maybe even today there will be some opportunities for developing and bringing some partnerships. So this is a bit more concrete about the goals I specified before. When we talk about sharing information, we have a website. We are present in all social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, regional networks. We have a very useful bulletin usability which talks, which provides you some information about the opportunities, about the different funding opportunities, research programs, which are going on, studying opportunities and all necessary things for developing your professional profile. There are different blog posts that we published. Nowadays, we have 15,000 registered members globally. We participate in different events like TROP and TAG and other important conferences. And the goal is, I told, very important to make the word of use heard and to be present on such kind of important events, for example, worlds in Jakarta, three conferences present as a WIPAD movement. We promote agricultural monkeying people by by telling, presenting some successful stories. And the guys who presented before also your stories can be successful stories that can inspire young people to choose this type of major so that they can see that there is an opportunity behind. It is not like the sector which is not interesting to anyone. And we have a social media boost camps, which broadcasts different events. We facilitate access to resource and capacity building opportunities. The needs are regional, region specific, but as I mentioned before, it's like can be grant, grant, writing, it can be public speaking, it can be leadership skills, so different skills we try to give opportunity to use to develop them. We had a meeting in Rome in 2015 where the external consultant has evaluated the work of WIPAD during four years. And we summarized where we are, what we achieved, what is good and what is better, what are the things that we can improve. And we realized that we should, we decided to drive towards like more content based paradigm to improve the, what do we want to say? Okay, we have the voice, but what do we want to say? Therefore, we launched some projects like the Rosa Mentoring Programme launched with support young women and young entrepreneurs and agribusiness, so they experienced people share the experts of the field, they share their ideas and they support the young entrepreneurs. We make strong original programs with a wider impact and we include more use in steering committee and in execute committees. So that's briefly the introduction of our network. You're welcome to place any questions and to discuss some opportunities for partnerships. Thank you, Jonna. Do you have any questions for Jonna now? Thank you. Nice, then let's move on. We are having some uploading last minute. We are now happy to welcome Olof Sehmann who is a board member of the Swedish East African Chamber of Commerce, Sveak. You're very welcome. Do you have a speaker already? Yes. Just in time presentation, so I made some changes during the other speakers. So Swedish East African Chamber of Commerce is exactly what it sounds like. It's an Chamber of Commerce, an organization to promote business between Sweden and Sweden itself. I have been studying at the Royal Institute of Technology here. Land surveyor, not landmethery, as my first degree, and then land and water management as my PhD thesis, focusing on water resources and land management. I've been working as a consultant more than 30 years in Africa from South Africa on the east coast, maybe up to Egypt, and my projects involved as a consultant has been focusing on water resources and environment and agriculture. Of course agriculture needs water as we all know. It's from rain-fed to to irrigated agriculture. Start with Sveak, what we are doing and how to serve our our clients or members. So we focus on networking, knowledge, development, and collaboration, of course, and our vision is to increase the business between Sweden and East Africa, self-explanatory, and our mission is to provide a meeting place. I mean we're not doing the business, we are facilitators for people to meet. From the East African community, South Sudan, if you look at the map, is now a member of the East African community just recently, although a rather difficult market to work in. I will show you some projects where I've been there. Yeah, and one of our parties or several parties, of course the East African embassies here in in Sweden, represented by the dean, Mr. Tang here, and also, of course, the other embassies represented here in in the north, for the Nordic countries. Not all of them are present here in in Stockholm, but in Norway and in Denmark. So what we are trying to do is to focus or we have actually made a survey of from a members and what they would like us to do. We are very small members, financed, and pro bono board type of organization, so we don't have a very large turnover. So we're not really doing business, but trying to facilitate business, as I said. Members, business development. The members are from large companies like Skania to one man companies, or one woman companies, and of course the interaction between the embassies and the Swedish minister for affairs and other government organizations. We try to facilitate the contract for our members and the board itself with the various players. And also for internal cooperation, specifically the small companies, they benefit a lot if they can cooperate, not compete. I mean some of them have similar business models, but I mean we're a bit poor on that in Sweden if you compare to Nordic members to join forces rather than compete on new markets. If you look at the Danes which we are a bit dangerous, government bodies and private sector, they always walk hand in hand into new markets. So we see our role to facilitate that also, to be kind of a catalyst between government shops and private business. You can read the self-worth to new channels, to information, and to develop business. And this one is a rather novelty because mainly because of expense. There is a European Council, European Business Council for Africa and the Middle East, and I will come back to that. That represents about 3,000 companies. And to enter into their network, and this very open network, all information is actually a bit too much. We get daily newsletters and how to sort that information. And that's anything from that connected to, how would you say, Omwel's analys in English anyhow, two direct business opportunities. This is how we finance our activities. We have just doubled the fee rates, although not, I don't Michael if you got the new rate there. You shouldn't. I think you got last year's rate. Anyhow, so it's reasonably cheap for an individual and small companies, and for a big company it's also peanut money, although important for ourselves to be able to keep up the activities that we aim to. We have a lot of broad kind of business area we try to cover from energy, tourism, ICT, medtech, health, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, water and sanitation. How do we manage that with such a small, I mean the board is five or seven people, and we're rather key to catalyst our members. Well, we try to focus on one area at the time and we try to make clusters. I would go through that. This is what it said before, the actors and the partners we try to cooperate with. Other African embassies, the ESC countries, embassies of course, other African chambers. There are some five or so. Sviak is the oldest, we're about five, six years old, and the largest. Then there is one from North Africa, there is one from East Africa, from West Africa, from Central Africa, and South Africa, and one for Ethiopia. Something like that. And of course we should also aim at not competing but cooperate. That has been a bit touchy at times, but we are doing our best to to get everything together. The Swedish body, the government bodies that are engaged in development cooperation, is now kind to focus their own business into a brand name. I don't know if it's properly working yet. That is to be asked maybe to Mr. Ola here. Team Sweden is business Sweden, SIDA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc. And they at least, Ministry of Foreign Affairs consider us to be members of Team Sweden because we're all promoting business and development cooperation. Not only in Africa, but all over. There you have EBCAM again. Now, this is our kind of areas we try to to move into through various activities, mangos, breakfast meetings, seminars, events, and then to make the focus area a bit more concrete. We are starting to develop clusters where smaller group of members, we're about 200 plus members, but smaller group of members that have a specific interest and can be the driving force outside of the board of developing the business there. So energy coupled to financing, well everything is coupled to financing of course. Tourism we try to start, there was not very keen interest, very strange. I mean East Africa is a fantastic, like Michael was saying, it's a fantastic country for tourism or countries for tourism. Not at the time maybe for Burundi and South Sudan, but that is temporary kind of turmoil, hopefully. ICT is developing more rapidly in East Africa than in Sweden. The tools you have, some of the tools that we are now getting in our pockets were developed in Kenya or even Ethiopia has a fantastic coupled to agriculture when I was there quite recently. I've been living in Ethiopia for some three years and in Swaziland, where I saw a lecture at the Faculty of Agriculture at the time actually for all water resources subjects. There are three banking ladies who develop the sophisticated SMS systems to the farmers.  Meaning that since they have two days to the market on a donkey or something, well the price of watermelons are too poor today, so I wait a couple of days until they're not rotten, but so it gives a fantastic possibility the mobile phones there. Okay, so I have five minutes to go. Let's again, we try to get some cluster committees and focus areas again. And these are the activities again, breakfast meetings, mingles, seminars, cluster activities, urban development, healthcare. We also had a big forum on ICT and healthcare with some 70 participants a couple of weeks ago or 23rd of March, it's a bit more than a month ago, which was considered very successful. We tried to have some member service and this EBCAM, what I said was 4,000 member companies, and of course that's very interesting for Swedish export companies, big and small, to have a network that you can use. And the thing is we get access to the political arena also, and since this is a chamber, the private Swedish companies cannot get access to this EBCAM without our support, so we are the key to get there. Okay, there's some, well pictures from my own travels, this is mainly from Lake Tanganyika and from Nigeria, where they have still, they have the kingdoms there, which is a parallel government, which is very important, you cannot just go through the standard government structure there. This is an example from Rwanda, where I have been working in the last 10 years. I did the strategic environmental assessment of their energy sector, which is everything, they go for, of course, everything. They have peat, these are 20 meters deep peat bogs, which are another structure in here in Sweden, so Svek, where I used to work, and make both incineration plant, doubling up the energy production in Rwanda by utilizing peat, production of peat and incineration. They have biogas in Lake Kivu, bordering to DRC, which is geologically old methane, not recent methane, so it's it's sold in the bottom water, so you just put down a pipe and it bubbles up, you treat the gas and you run it to your generators to generate electricity. Well, there's an engine there also. This is showing some good forestry in Borundi, hydropower, and of course the gorillas you need to take care of there. So hydropower, solar, peat, methane, geothermal, and of course petroleum products as well. So again, there's plenty of business opportunities, silk investments, H&M are investing in Ethiopia and not only them, IKEA is there. These are some products that Svek was doing. South Sudan, I've been working tourism, of course this is again from Lake Tanganyika, urban development, the cities are growing like anything. Invest in real estate in the capitals in Africa. You will get, well, twice or three times back in five years time, I'm sure. This is another example. This is not very well-known river. It's the second largest tributary to the Nile, besides the Blue Nile, if you consider Blue Nile to be a tributary. Well, Blue Nile is bigger than the White Nile, so maybe the White Nile is a tributary. That can be debated by Kenyans and Ugandan or Burundians. One minute to go. This is a study that I was doing the terms of reference for. That's ENTRU, the Eastern Nile Technical Region office, which is based in Addis. This is from the Barakubo and these are the Nile basin flags. Thank you. Winter, not only hockey, but skiing, one missing also. This is some, maybe not very serious rules to remember, but you can try it out. Thank you very much. Clarification questions? Sure, it's one. Yes. Well, if you want my contact details, since I don't have too many business cards, they're just there. Hi, Claude. Okay, thank you. My name is Inosan Chamisa, currently in Rome with FAO. I was just wondering if you are having any prospects of investing or maybe of partnering partnerships with the southern Afghan countries. I see your main focus in the East. Are you thinking in the near future of going down south? Yeah, I mean what I was trying to say is that we have started to cooperate seriously with the other chambers that has, some of them are very young and have not really formed their business model at all, like the central and western and northern guys. The southern chamber of commerce as well as the Ethiopian one, they have a good structure and we have had joint activities. We had an energy and financing activity at the Ethiopian embassy and this big forum we had with 70 participants which was co-organized by the Swedish South African Chamber of Commerce. So I mean we cooperate well and by being a member just pay the fee and you can get access to these guys also. You can go to our website which is just sveak.se, so have it launched there and you will see whatever activities we have for the coming few months or for the coming year. Great, thank you for a nice presentation. I didn't hear a word about corruption in East Africa and as an East African I know that corruption in business sectors or business corruption with secrets, contracts and so forth are numerous including golden m6. I mean what is your take on that sir? Yes, since most of the projects sveak go as a big consultancy there are now 17,000 people. When I left it was 9,500. We have of course very strict business model CSR policies and such stuff and of course you get confronted almost every day in various ways. Most of the projects a big consultancy wins is by competitive bidding with World Bank financing not too much CEDA financing today but it used to be in all the times African Development Bank etc and of course some national procurements. World Bank is one of the most strict organizations in the world I would say when it comes to corruption they have their detectives and lawyers coming to your house scrutinizing your books for the last 10 years or something if they doubt that there's not any clean business going on. Now on the client side it might be a bit difficult at times. If we look at the East African countries I have the latest experience from Rwanda is one of the cleanest country in Transparency International's listing in practice maybe cleaner than Sweden. Ethiopia where I've lived is also I mean it might be dependent on the government the strength of the government where they have very strong presidents of prime ministers that people don't dare to make any monkey business because they will be put away for time. Well I mean it's just to as a private consultant to keep your morale I mean it's not I don't see it as very difficult if you have any problem that's why I think Michael brought it up that the friendliness should not be misunderstood with corruption if you have a problem in executing a project or you often have a beer with the guys and you solve it try to work in Eastern Europe where they like to whip consultants because they think they are so much clever than the consultant is. So that's my experience by the way and even so in the Balkans a very long answer on a short question maybe time is out. Super let's say for more discussions to the panel so then we move on to before the panel move on to the last speaker of this session Stephen Carr and Stephen is an independent consultant and will present the agripreneurship alliance a youth focused approach for food security. Hi good morning I'm the last speaker that's important to note okay so what I'm going to try and do is put a bit of the conversations from our esteemed speakers from early this morning into context review those a little as well as talk a little about this thing called the agripreneurship alliance. A bit about myself first I'm English actually I'm a York shaman which is a big deal I'm currently living in Switzerland and my background is young people community development so I come from an educational background but I also have a big interest in agriculture and agribusiness in part because of family background as well amongst other things and I'm currently working as an independent consultant and one of the pieces of work that I'm currently involved in is the launch of a very early stage not-for-profit startup which we're calling the agripreneurship alliance and I'll touch more about that very soon. So to put some things into context that we've already been discussing agriculture in Africa agriculture in Africa is focused on small holders most of the food production is not by large-scale farms it's by small holder farmers and this employs billions of people around the world but we also know that many of the farmers themselves are women and then you enter into the whole debate that's already been talked about about the gendered roles within rural economies about the access to land rights the access to the profits that come out of selling produce and we also know that farmers are getting older and older and older by the day the average age of farmers in Africa if not around the world is nearly 60 years and so what happens next? There are lots of definitions about what young people are I know a wide part have been talking about it being from 40 down the major policy positions in Africa are that young people are up to the age of 35 so in terms of the work that I'm doing that's the kind of age group that we're focusing on and it's already been mentioned young people are making up an increasingly large size of the population in Africa in fact Africa is the youngest continent in the world and you have to look at that as being a risk or an opportunity and obviously there's a massive opportunity there for gainful employment for creation of enterprise and so on and 10 million young people join Africa's labor market every year many of those going to employment within the formal sector some of those are starting up businesses whether it's micro small medium size enterprises and many of them are working on family farms and so the official statistics which were mentioned is that unemployment is officially about 12% in Africa but obviously I think the big question mark of the legitimacy of that figure is a good question to ask and only 16% of young people in Africa have got a wage job and poverty is still a big issue in Africa the sustainable development goals based on the millennium goals have had massive impact on the levels of poverty but it's still an issue and many people in Africa are still living below the level of US $2 a day so there are global challenges that we all face whether we're in northern Europe whether in Switzerland like me or whether we're in Africa climate change is huge climate change will affect every single one of us and it will definitely impact on my little boy who's four we know that science that climate change is happening we know that a one degree rise in temperature dramatically reduces yield of agricultural crops we know that climate change can have impact on poverty because people move we see issues around competition increased competition for water resources we see increased competition for issues like access to pasture land for grazing and this leads to migration we've been talking a lot already about the migration of young people from rural to urban areas it happens in Africa it happens in the UK I'm sure it happens in Sweden where young people for whatever reason are saying my future is not in this little village in the countryside I want to go to the big city whether it's Dar es Salaam whether it's Stockholm whether it's Geneva and there is an added element to this migration which is the idea that people move because of climate change my communities aren't as profitable habitable as they used to be or it can be because of conflict and there is some work which is suggesting that in Africa climate change is a leading cause of conflict population growth we forecast by 2050 to have a population in the region of nine billion nine billion people in this world and after that eleven billion people that's a lot of miles to feed a lot of people are now saying that our food system our global food system is broken and one of the issues within this is that there's actually enough food developed in the world to feed everybody but that food is not necessarily in the right place or it's the wrong sort of food and so that there are some key factors about food that I wanted to talk about one third of the food that is produced is wasted never actually is used for the purpose that it's intended for it either doesn't make it to market it rots in a field it isn't transported properly or it's wasted post I was going to say post consumption but how much food do we as individuals throw away we buy too much in the supermarket we leave it in the fridge it goes moldy or that we take too much onto our plates and it gets thrown out it's all wasted calories and food losses amount to over 600 billion us a year and in particular staples such as fruits vegetables cereals tubers are key foods that we lose and as you can see different food crops lose different percentages gonna talk about a bit about opportunities but something I want you to focus on here I'm sorry I don't have a pointer this point here sub-Saharan Africa the vast majority of the food that is wasted is post-production sorry post-harvest it does not get to market it does not get to be processed it does not get to a point where value can be added to that product and so there's an opportunity there I think I thought I'd bring in a scientist because I'm not one Albert Einstein who was a physicist not an agriculturalist said in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity so when we see challenges we see problems that can be fixed is there a chance here as Michael was saying that there's opportunities for us to develop business and when I'm talking about food as you've probably gathered I'm not just talking about primary production of foodstuffs I'm not just talking about growing maize or raising livestock or fruits or I'm talking about the entire range of food businesses both on a local and a global level that impact right through to the food being on somebody's plate and what happens next anyway yeah so there's plenty of opportunities here not just for young people in Africa but for people here there's a huge amount of work happening right now in terms of strategic frameworks in Africa to support youth focused and youth driven agripreneurship and one of the biggest declarations that was made is this thing and I'm not going to go into details it was signed off by the African Union Commission in 2014 and it made some very very ambitious statements about reducing the amount of food that is wasted about reducing the number of people who are hungry and when we're talking about hunger in Africa we're no longer just talking about calorie deficient diets people don't get enough calories to to eat increasingly we're talking about the quality of the diet so for example it's just been released today in a scoping exercise in Malawi 60 percent of people are vitamin A deficient 30 percent of children are iron deficient 25 percent currently 25 percent of infant deaths are caused directly by malnutrition food is still an issue it's a live issue here and it is an issue of life and death but the potential for value creation is important because as some have been saying there's a very vicious cycle in places where hunger leads to food aid and then people get reliant upon food aid and that cycle's got to be broken so that food can actually be created locally both for local consumption but also to enter into the global market for finance I think I'm the first person to put an SGG sticker up today it's important guys sustainable development goals are here and they provide real clear frameworks for us to justify what we do and whether that's as part of a business pitch or whether it's a pitch to a funder or it's an important framework to remember and things like no poverty no hunger looking after the land looking after the waters so the activities that we do have to be sustainable in the long term I'm really grateful that I to youth agripreneur programs be mentioned and this and that program which is three years into running now and drip being driven by Evelyn on Woozie is really important and this has developed the idea from that is where enable youth has come from which as we know is a multi-billion US dollar funded project by the African Development Bank to support youth agripreneurs in 25 sub-Saharan states the role of universities is really important as places for learning but also places for creation of work of business the idea of incubation units and there's a lot of really good NGOs doing work as well in this area but one of the things that we've been doing and I'm talking now about the agripreneurship alliance is we've been doing some work about where are the gaps so we've been talking to agencies we've been talking to young people who are part of the youth agripreneurs program and what we've realized is that there is really great training happening in terms of agricultural practices fish farming cassava, yarn production and so on what's not so strong at this moment in time is the business skills training to support that and to support the creation of new businesses so that's where the agripreneurship alliance hopefully comes in really early stages here okay I kind of feel a bit entrepreneurial at times we're really small you're looking at me we've got a good backup from a business sector corporation and the idea is to support agripreneurship and these programs that are already happening in Africa with the development of cloud-based resources focusing on early stage development of people's first business plans but cloud-based resources and cloud-based training programs that can be embedded into those face-to-face training programs so we're going to promote and stimulate youth driven entrepreneurship and agriculture and agribusiness remember that whole stretch between startups of primary production through to the final food on the plate and we've got some aims we're going to encourage and support young people to be farmers through choice not necessity we're going to inspire agripreneurs to start up businesses we're going to encourage novel approaches and contribute to local and global security now that's a lot of things for a small lean new startup to do and that's why our partnership of business universities and NGO sectors is going to be really important to us and currently we have about 40 organizations of different types who are saying that they want to be a part of the agripreneurship alliance I should say it's not launched yet and we're on soft launch period we're just getting our legal side of things sorted out and we hope to have a harder launch by the end of this year thank you for your attention are there any questions or can I sit down please if you're going to sit down why don't we invite everyone who has been speaking because this is the panel session discussion so please go ahead just a quick few things here and I asked to the speakers actually there have been a lot of presentation I have heard from several people that like to have access to them later on so those of you are okay with putting them online is okay if there's any restriction you can send them send the revised version to me yeah that's okay okay I just want to make you aware of that this part of the workshop but the whole workshop is actually part of of a discussion brief that we're gonna write to get it with Siani and SOU so we're trying to to see the outcomes of this workshop to be reflected in something that people can work with further so it's not that we just have nice discussions here we want to take it the next step okay so it's important your input really matters I think it was really nice to see this morning and earlier as well in the presentations they ran the gamut from perspective and organizations from the university but people at university trying to drive knowledge-based interventions trying to see why people do not get into business why are women you know disfavored in the sense and what can we do about it so we have a university represented we have networks initiatives why part trying to facilitate interconnectivities between actors in agriculture we have north-south linkage with Swayak represented and an NGO and there's a whole bunch of NGOs that work on agriculture and trying to foster this and Stephen Karan has been talking about his and Joe and there's a lot of them besides them it is important to see that you know for all of this we need to have everyone on board one thing I want to mention here as well one important thing being in a person at the university is education I mean we know that business opportunities may arise we can make a quick buck or two by starting businesses but of course what we need to move to is more knowledge-intensive agriculture and more equitable and so how do we develop tool sets for youth to be more engaged in agriculture and to actually probe into their entrepreneurial skills how do we do make calculated risks so these sort of things we bring to the discussion after lunch and I really invite you to think about these things for now I would like to think have you bring up the questions that may have come up during the presentations and ask them there's a large panel so hopefully lots of questions okay thank you very much I'm Cecilia Nordin van Gansberg from the government's offices thank you for very interesting presentations just one reflection I think we in Sweden share many of the problems that we have as you can see in Africa is that it's not cool being in rural areas it's not cool working with agriculture and you've all discussed things that will apply when people are this age and they have certain education and I'd like if you'd like to make a comment shouldn't it be that you have to be outside you sir you're living in Dar I mean now we just how do we make the areas where agriculture happens to be cool areas and also we know that urbanization tends to take place in cities who were first established in the place where you could grow your food so when they expand they will be expanding on fertile ground so how do we get young kids to actually think it's cool to be in the countryside and being an entrepreneur not just a farmer thank you and by will anyone yeah I'll try and answer that so that's okay the idea that we have and is if we if we can encourage young people to see business opportunities within rural areas where they can see themselves as being able to create wealth which is not necessarily as you say directly linked to or only directly linked to agricultural production but is in the entire value chain things like marketing things like extension services adding value finance the whole gamut of activities that support food moving from the soil to the plate for example and we believe that if we can encourage people to take that risk take that chance you actually start enabling the development of sustainable rural communities because if you have people who choose to stay within rural communities who are able to have a good life within that community then those people themselves can start demanding better services and be able to contribute to buying those services and we hope that that idea will then lead to a greater voice for those rural communities so they can engage more with their political representatives so that they can start arguing for and advocating for better communication links so we believe that there's a real fundamental role here and it is a chicken and an egg it's a case of can we encourage young people in particular to choose to stay in rural areas take the chance to find niches where they can create business that can give them a good life and hopefully that will then lead to the other side and it is I'm turning more and more to this idea of people take risks people don't plan too much actually find a niche and try it and if it works great if it doesn't learn from that and adapt it and try again at something a bit different and so I think that idea of the entrepreneurial spirit is really really important within this thank you to add something on that in the field of entrepreneurship we currently have this emerging branch of entrepreneurship known as rural entrepreneurship and scholars have tried to differentiate between rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in rural like when the investor go to Tender Himba and establish the case show that is might be entrepreneurship in rural but we need to develop youth capacity in rural entrepreneurship the focus is on looking at opportunities specifically on a particular area and how to creatively combine the resources of a particular areas because most of the time we forget what we have and we look opportunities somewhere else and we have a number of opportunities which can be exploited within the areas so I think one way of making rural area attractive is to turn the eyes of the young generation to the opportunities which can be exploited in a given areas we have potential like we have fruits we have maybe a certain brand of whether it's cat or whatever or fishy or whatever which is available in a particular area then we can maximize on that and capitalize on the resources which are available we may start small and attract more I think that is can be another option Thank you, I'm Messia Yeah, just to connect with what my colleagues have said Yeah, if you think of youth entrepreneurs in agriculture and we only focus on farming I think it's not the best thing that youth for example in Africa would think of venturing but then if we think of involvement of youth in the agriculture but in the whole of our chain I think then that makes more sense and that is where for example I come with my project where we have some few cases that have been successful from the rural have been able to move up the chain down the chain and that's from farming to processing and to trading so we can learn from these cases in terms of the challenges the opportunities they face and those that have also tried and failed we can also learn from them and have some at least a package of insights that can inform other youth in the rural on the benefit of engaging in agriculture Also I have some addition here looking at the rural populations in Tanzania for instance we have a lot of women who are involved in production so if we empower these women so that they can see the opportunities available close to the areas and these women stay with their kids around they can impact this education to their kids and therefore these kids will be looking at the resources that are close to them because of the influence of the parents so that's why my study is focusing on the women empowering the women within their groups once they are well knowing the opportunities entrepreneurial opportunities then they can enhance their kids to understand the nature of the environment around them and the opportunities that are around them and therefore this will facilitate easier understanding of entrepreneurial opportunities among the kids or the youth around the various villages of the country your question was how to motivate people to stay and I see what we have done in Tanda Inbaden since we now are some sort of a center of excellency where we show how real business is supposed to be done we have created quite a few startups around us by local people and they are now becoming real entrepreneurs and they are now part of the legal system paying taxes having companies that are formalized in a real way so they are now part of the black economy and that's what we do because since we are a transparent company we need to have a receipt we need to have an invoice so we turn what used to be an informal market into a formal market we also, and I think I'm quite a cool guy by being around there I think I myself get people to rethink I think this is quite cool and I see quite a few examples another personal reflection on the similarities between Sweden and African agriculture my grandfather had two hectares horticulture production close to Stockholm here so the Marcus was close in Brog which is just, I don't know, 50 kilometers not even that from Stockholm center my mother, she left at 16 like a youngster at the time through the challenge in Stockholm and married a sea captain now when I look at this piece of land my grandfather here when there was some mis-harvest he cut off a piece of land and sold it to some other guys so there was a lot of summer houses surrounding the farmland contributing to the harvesting exercises of course so it was a proper African family five families was living on these two hectares intensive cropping so now what I see there is not too much farming there the main piece of land is kind of a moonshine farmer IT specialists living on the main house but they're still contributing they came back there's also relatives to me they took over the farm and there's some sheep there and they take some apples and so forth so it's not intensive farming any longer but it's sustaining one it's not really sustaining one family but they're coming back so maybe that might happen also that the guys who are living I think many people in Sweden they go back if they have the opportunities to survive another thing reflecting to your discussion was I don't know if you saw a very interesting television program a couple of well last week I suppose it was called The Last Harvest very challenging program there was one well a few positive words said I don't know if it's two or not but they said if we manage by changing the agriculture practices to increase the humus in the soil with three percent we will catch all human carbon generated in the atmosphere three percent but to make that happen it's a real challenge I mean if you look into the some very exploited soils where the humus is consumed instead of increasing but think about it to put some natural let's just fertilizers back to the soil instead of chemical fertilizers that's fantastic to increase the humus and plow back some organics yeah I just wanted underlined the point which Michael Reister that is very important to show like good examples successful stories so then people would see that people can be well-being they can profit from the business and they can do a good thing and in the rural areas and have a good lifestyle and then you make it work but yeah that's what also we are doing one of the objectives of WIPAD to promote agriculture among like youth people hi hello there is I mean during the lectures it was very highlighted that a lot of farmers are small-scale farmers but you also have the problem of the multinationals that are that have big part of the whole food business so how as small-scale farmers or small holder producers can they compete with big corporations no I suddenly understood that that was not supposed to be here so I felt a little bit embarrassed but I think that small-holder farmers normally can compete very well perhaps not in the big staple foods like wheat rice and things like that but in all niche products fruits spices legumes groceries yeah so but they need they need also to move ahead with using the right seeds we're trying to fertilize with keeping some of the money for the next season and things like that and quite basic things that a lot of the farmers don't really understand oh yeah just a little comment on this I think what we're missing sometimes is that where the economies of size are because what you're talking about is economies of size and very often the economies of size do not lie on the primary production so these multinationals what they capture is what happens in between in processing in marketing in research okay so if this is provided somehow the small producers can can capture the value you see what I mean so you don't have to integrate necessarily and I'm not praise I mean I'm not saying that there are not economies of size in in primary production there are but sometimes you can't it's inevitable that you have small farms and you need to work down the chain to capture that that's all I could say that for me we have the opportunity to go into farming to do the cashew and it would have been more profitable than being in processing actually but we picked processing because of the land issue and because of the we might have been criticized if we own the land with us now with our factory in Tandemba we have seen an increased activity among the cashew farmers because they get paid on time and they get better paid so and we have now 3 000 contracted farmers and some of them didn't take care of their trees before and they do that in a better way and we can then transfer our knowledge that we know that the European consumers once they need traceability they need to know that it's safe they need to know that there is no child labour and we can then transfer that kind of practices all around thank you very much mine was just to add on to the previous question in the situation as far as Kenya is concerned since 2013 we've had a new constitution which has actually devolved government to 47 regions and one of the key sectors within that is the agriculture what has happened as a result of that is that there's more people now staying in those 47 regions than previously so a lot of people actually getting involved in agricultural you know in agriculture itself and agricultural practices so to speak so there's more people now who are who are based in the regions themselves thank you as a continuation or rejoining to to the ambassador's comment the population of Africa is growing at a very fast rate faster than the economic growth and then the population is very young around 70 percent of the population are less than 30 years of age these are people we should feed them we should meet their desires and aspirations and while we do all these things we also have to conserve nature so that the future generation takes advantage of that and if you don't have a strong governance structure or a leadership structure is it really possible to have all these beautiful words we have heard today come in place I give you a very good example from my own country Uganda and I hope the the Moussevenian apologies at Cedar will not accuse me for this one Moussevenian is on record that you know if if if if if young Ugandans cannot cannot cannot work in the farm let them go abroad because the money we get through remittances or the money Uganda gets through remittances is very sweet and very good so it's basically encouraging Ugandans young Ugandans not to rely so much on rural activities or farming and look at migrations and going out as an option to make the country's economy flourish that is equally bad I'm not going to talk about the women because women farmers have complained a lot and Moussevenian tells them straight well if you cannot compete with the man and then you stay in the kitchen he's on record he said it and this is a man who when he went talking to the Swedes or to the European is treated as a darling is the is the blue-eyed chap down there in Africa but what it does when it comes to encouraging farming or young people to you know to continue agriculture as a way of enhancing their livelihoods it does the opposite so how are you going to meet this without a clear democratic and you know realistic political system I think we are not going to to make good good impact let me put it cruelly that way I have a comment and something to add yes please so we're talking about all this new opportunities and I wanted to ask if in this context the opportunities to make this sustainable is also taken into consideration and perhaps not do the same errors some of the errors that we have done here developing the question was clear you could yeah so sustainability issue with respect to agripreneurship sustainable development goals yeah I think it I'm still talking I think it's completely correct if we're trying to encourage the development of the term African agricultural renaissance has been coined and that has to be with a long-term perspective facing the challenges that we as people of this world face and so if people are developing new businesses within agriculture and agribusiness there has to be a long-term focus on that not just in terms of the short-term economy but also in terms of the long-term sustainability of the resources that you utilize so for example one of the very large issues I think at the moment and I'm sure you know far more about this than I do is access to water resources and so the idea that of the last decade massive new underground water sources have been identified across Africa and people have started exploiting these which is completely understandable but the problem is people are utilizing those underground water resources at a far higher rate than they're being replenished and so in the long term those businesses that are dependent upon those and the livelihoods that are dependent on those are not sustainable so we need to be looking at the idea of circular economies how can we best use and best see the opportunities in using less to do more and utilizing not just the initial inputs that go into a food system but what about the what comes out at the other end in terms of waste food waste creation of compost and fertilizers and so on that we can actually utilize as business opportunities that can then be recycled back into the system So actually as a quick follow-up there when you talk as a NGO developing e-learning courses and all that you focus mostly on developing agricultural or entrepreneurial skills is sustainability part of the package that you're going to offer online is it it has to be there has to be so what we're going to be looking at is the development of an e-learning course about six modules focused on skills needed within the topic of agribusiness but within the cultural context of Africa so very much an African developed program supported by experts and organizations in universities on a global perspective but added to that bringing in some of the individual short inputs from people who are experts within their particular fields whether that's packaging recycling energy usage and so on to basically inspire and create ideas There's still room for questions of course we can save all the questions for discussions later on around the table but some more questions are possible if not it's about we're running a little bit late but we have plenty of time for the lunch and there will be lunch served outside and I want to urge you to be back here a quarter past one before we go for the round table discussions so we explain what we will be doing then okay is there anything else that I'm forgetting right now okay thank you thank you all the speakers yes very much thank you so much


What's going on everybody? Got a Kyle here relating sports cards. We've been 2023 inception baseball Inception baseball. These will be for um, this is for Jesse s Good luck. Mr. Jesse. Let's see what we got Yeah, no, I think it's gonna be tomorrow Jennifer. I think it'll be the first one up tomorrow. Um, be around midnight tomorrow Yeah, sorry, uh, sorry we're a little behind but I had a couple people off uh, Sam will be back tomorrow So we'll get we'll get back to caught up pretty much just me and lane for the most of this week so far We'll get all caught up again tomorrow Good luck. Jesse and no, we appreciate being busy for sure. There's a green rookie is Connor capel for the eights Connor capel. We got a Matt McLean rookie base Matt McLean for the reds the bread man Some kid was holding up a big a big piece of bread for Panarin Panarin bread is a uh, Shane Bieber Uh, Corey seager on the base Got a Bryce Harper base And on the back we have a rookie out of 249. It's gonna be bow nailer Go nailer on the rookie out of the 249 or the guardians I almost bought that jersey of uh Oh the scentsy one.  Alrighty there. Mr. Jesse that will do it that will do it for your inception baseball Thank you so much my man. We'll get those right out. He has always sir


Welcome to another edition of HeyDT. HeyDT is a series of videos I do where I respond to viewer questions and comments. These viewer questions and comments, they typically come from the comments on the videos that I post on YouTube and on Odyssey. Sometimes these questions and comments, they come through social media such as Reddit, Mastodon, sometimes they come through email. And the very first question I want to respond to is, HeyDT, couldn't you do a sort of challenge where you try to actually live in different distributions for a week or a month, like Matt from The Linux Cast does sometimes? For example, well, a Boon 2 2304, or at least something that is a bit different from a Window Manager and Arch. Now, this is a reoccurring question that I often get from viewers of the channel, and I'll just say this. I don't like distro-hopping these days. I don't like distro-hopping on my main workstation here at the office or my home computer because I have those set up and I've got a lot of different things going on on those computers where it would be a little bit of work for me to hop from what I'm currently using to another distribution and what would be the reason for that. I understand why new to Linux users ask this because they imagine it will be some kind of radical change and workflow and, you know, I might run into some issues because I'm used to a certain distribution and now I'm using a different distribution. But the problem for me is I've used them all, right? I've used them all, but I've lived in a lot of different Linux distributions. He mentions a Boon 2 2304, which recently came out. I did a video on that and I had people, Hey, why don't you live in a Boon 2 for a while? And this is something that actually comes up a lot on the comments on my channel is, Hey, DT, why don't you leave Arch for a little while and go live in a Boon 2? I've used a Boon 2, right? I've actually lived in a Boon 2 for many, many, many years. A Boon 2 was the very first desktop Linux distribution I used and I ran it for, I don't know, eight years. You know, like seriously, at least an eight year period where I lived in a Boon 2 and even when I started hopping to other distributions here in the last seven or eight years, right? I still have machines that run a Boon 2. I still always install a Boon 2 server on like any kind of web servers that I spend up and things like that. I often install a Boon 2 on friends and family members computers. I've mentioned before that in my laptop bag, keep a USB stick with a Boon 2 always on me. And the reason for that is because anytime somebody wants to do anything with Linux, they're interested in Linux. Hey, what's this Linux thing? Can you let me try it out? I put them on a Boon 2. So I know a Boon 2. There's nothing in a Boon 2 that's going to be new, interesting or exciting to me. And honestly, it wouldn't be interesting or really exciting to you guys if I put it on camera because you're not going to see anything different with DT living in a Boon 2 than DT living in Arch Linux. It will be exactly the same thing. And the reason is as new users, you know, it'll be a little different. But once you've used Linux for a long time like I have, and once you've become used to a certain kind of workflow, and for me that would be the terminal command line workflow, you know, I'm always opening a terminal and doing things in a terminal for the most part, or if I'm spending time working on documents, whether it be writing, creative writing, scripting, programming, whatever, you know, I open up Emacs these days and I live in Emacs. And it really doesn't matter what distribution I'm running. They're all going to have the same pass shell with the same command line programs that I use all the time. It doesn't matter if I'm using Gen2, Fedora, OpenSusa, Debian, it doesn't matter. It's the same shell with the same command line utilities. You guys see me use on camera every single video practically, right? Emacs is going to be the same regardless of what Linux distribution I use. And heck, I could even use Emacs on things like the Mac OS or even Windows. It'll be a little different on Windows because there's some things that are not available in the Windows ecosystem that we have on Linux. But for the most part, it would even be the same there. So I'm not the right person for distro hopping on camera and thinking you're going to see something different. For that to make sense, it needs to be somebody that is actually going to use the distribution, the actual GUI desktop environment that ships with that distribution and actually use it with its default settings the way it was intended. I've never done that, right? I'm not going to install Laboom 220304 and use GNOME. Or if I did use GNOME, I wouldn't use GNOME the GNOME way. Typically, I'm going to set up a key binding to quickly access a terminal, a run launcher, and Emacs, which is essentially what I do in my tiling window manager. So it would be the exact same workflow. Well, it just doesn't make sense for somebody like me to do those kinds of videos. It would be a lot of work on my part to distro hop and, you know, move files around and all of this on my computer. And at the end of the day, my workflow and everything on video would look exactly the same. Moving on to the next questions, another one that comes up all the time, especially here recently. Hey, DT, speaking of Weyland, have you considered trying some of the tiling Weyland compositors on camera? River is configured similarly to BSPWM and has a DWM like tiling layout. Hyperland is another very popular one because of its amazing animations. I would love to find out what's your opinion on these projects and whether you like them or not. On Arch, they work pretty much perfectly. So the problem is not the distribution that I run as far as why you haven't seen me try any of these Weyland compositors, these Weyland window managers. The reason I don't try them is because on my home computer, which is the computer I spend most of my time, it's the one I live in, right? The workstation here at the office is a little different. I just show up here to make videos on this computer. This computer has an AMD card. I could install these and probably be okay on this computer, but this is not the computer at my house that I do stuff on, like, you know, recreational stuff and actually do normal computer stuff on. The computer at my house has an NVIDIA card. NVIDIA is a problem on Weyland, right? So that's why I haven't tried any of these out. It's because to actually use them properly, I'd have to live in them long term, configure them to my liking. And I know it's going to be a headache, especially me being an NVIDIA user at home. And I don't want that headache, but also I wouldn't want to show any of these window managers in a negative light. I don't like showing any free and open store software projects in a negative light if I can help it. And because I know of the problems with Weyland and NVIDIA, I wouldn't want to put that on camera. So the only way for me to really show any of these on camera would be to play with them in virtual machines, but that's not a real experience as far as figure it and really learn the window manager in a VM. That would be kind of weird, right? I'd really need to actually live on it on my home computer, which is right now, it's just not possible. And the next question. Hey, DT, I am making the transition to Doomy Max, but I'm having a hard time to configure it to work with Python. Would you mind making a video on how to make E-Max able to work as an IDE? Feel free to choose any language of your liking. Cheers. So, I mean, I'm not a programmer or developer by trade. You guys see me sometimes do some basic shell scripting on camera.  But it's mainly a hobby. It's something I occasionally like to do, but it's not something I really enjoy. I can do it for a few hours at a time or a few hours, say, every month. I'll get the urge to program something, to script something, to write something. But it's not something, you know, I'm not the right kind of person to show you E-Max as an IDE for any specific language because that's not me, right? I wouldn't, I'm not a professional, right? You need to go on the Internet. There's plenty of programming forms on the Internet, Stack Overflow. There's nothing but developers and many of them use E-Max. Ask them, hey, how do you set up E-Max as a Python IDE? They'll tell you exactly the programs you want to install. Again, you're just asking the wrong person. I'm not sure. I mean, obviously I make E-Max videos, but E-Max is a very broad topic, right? E-Max basically is its own, practically its own operating system. It can do so many different things. And in this particular instance, what you're asking me, this, you know, professional programming developer kind of workflow that you're wanting to integrate into Doom E-Max, I'm not the right person to ask that question. Plus, I don't do much with Python. Now, I get similar questions also with Doom E-Max here recently. I've had people ask me, instead of Doom E-Max, hey, DT, can you show us how to take a standard vanilla GNU E-Max and make it into something like Doom E-Max? And I have done that in the past. I've actually, when I switched to E-Max, I started with vanilla GNU E-Max, then I moved to Doom E-Max and then I had it in my mind. I was going to go back to vanilla GNU E-Max and then try to turn it into something similar to Doom E-Max installing Evil Mode and all the niceties that I had in Doom E-Max. And it worked just fine. My config file was thousands of lines long, right? It was a lot of work, but I could get there. And I'm not sure in the end it wasn't worth it to me to transform GNU E-Max into Doom E-Max where I could just start with Doom E-Max. But I know why people ask this because a lot of you guys want to learn E-Max. And if you want to learn the process, I don't mind doing some of that on video since people have asked. So I may actually start doing that. We may do a series of videos where I take vanilla GNU E-Max and then slowly transform it into Doom E-Max. So yeah, watch for that in the future. Moving on. Hey, DT, could you take a look at the E-W-W bar and show DT's E-W-W config? I have actually, this E-W-W bar panel widget thingy has been around for a couple of years. I know it's, you see a lot of cool screenshots over on R slash Unix porn, but it is very clunky, kind of hard to use. It's not great documentation. It's not user friendly at all. I've actually looked at it. I haven't done a video on it because again, I don't like showing brand open source software projects in a negative light. And E-W-W, when you look at some of the things people create and their screenshots, it looks really amazing. And if you're all about artwork and aesthetics, E-W-W, I'm sure is something you'd be interested in. It's a very big time sink. Like you really got to put in some time and effort to transform these widgets and thingies to look and feel and do what you want them to do. And for me, it's just not worth it, especially since it's not going to be, it's not going to have the kind of functionality that the proper panel that shipped with your desktop environment or window manager shipped with, right? It's going to be something mainly for a screenshot. It's going to be something mainly for aesthetics. And for me, I'm more about function than aesthetics. Don't get me wrong. I like my desktops to look good. But I always choose function over good looks, right? Now, once I have something that functions right, I try to make it look as good as possible. But E-W-W, again, it's confusing. It's very difficult to work with. Documentation isn't great. And I get this question about E-W-W all the time. And the reason I get it is because I know a lot of you guys go and look at E-W-W and you can't figure it out or it looks like it's a ton of work. Surely somebody has to have some simple way to explain to me how to use it. And I'm telling you right now, I don't. So it's one of those things you're either going to have to put in all that time and effort to play with this kind of complicated thing or do what I choose to do and just use the bar, the panel that ships with your window manager. I think you're going to be much happier with that in the end. And the next question is a rather lengthy question, but I think it's an important one. So bear with me. Hey, DT, I switched to Linux Mint about six months ago from Windows 11, and I really love it. Now I'm interested in trying out other Linux distributions. For instance, I recently set up a multi-boot system with Arco Linux alongside with Linux Mint and Windows 11, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the experience. I'm considering installing the KDE Plasma desktop environment on Arco Linux to learn and customize it. However, I'm worried that it might be too early for me to switch to an arch-based distribution. I've had one incident where Mint broke, and I don't want to encounter similar issues again. Do you think it's advisable for me to switch to an arch-based distro at this stage? I simply want to ensure that my operating system remains stable. So there's a lot to unpack there.  And, yeah, that's cool, but here's the thing. You also say your main concern is to make sure that your operating system remains stable. Well, here's the catch. You can either have a rolling release distribution where you always have the latest and greatest packages because everything's always being updated all the time, and there's advantages to that. Or you can have a stable distribution, right? You can't really have a rolling release Arch Linux, Arco Linux, and stable, right? You choose one or the other, and they have their pros and cons. If you want something where you install it, it doesn't see packages updated all the time. As a matter of fact, most of your packages on a stable distribution, a static release distribution, something like Ubuntu LTS or Debian or Linux Mint, nothing really is being updated. That's why it's stable. That's why they rarely break on Arch Linux every single program installed on that distribution. As soon as it has an update, they're pushing that thing out to you. That's much more likely to break. Now, the upside is you always have the latest and greatest software, which sometimes you need that, especially if you start buying new hardware that needs, for example, the latest drivers, the latest kernel, things like that. So it is kind of a give-and-take, I will say, since you mentioned stability and that Linux Mint broke on you and it kind of frustrated you and you don't want to experience that again, then I'd probably hold off on moving to an Arch-based distribution at this point and maybe try another static release distribution. If all you've ever tried is Linux Mint, maybe try something else, maybe try MX Linux, which is a Debian-based Linux distribution that does some interesting things, uses the XFCE desktop environment, which you use Linux Mint. I don't know if you were using XFCE and Linux Mint or probably Cinnamon, but that might be one to try. If you were using Mate in Linux Mint, maybe try another Mate distribution like Ubuntu Mate. They put out a really nice distribution as well. Or if you want something that's not Debian or Ubuntu-based at all, maybe give something like OpenSusa a try. OpenSusa is interesting because you have two different branches. You have the static release branch that they call Leap and then you have the rolling release branch that they call Tumbleweed. Maybe install OpenSusa Leap and run that for a few months. You run that for a few months and that looks cool and you're ready to go into a rolling release. Give rolling release a try if you will. Just switch OpenSusa from Leap to Tumbleweed and then try the rolling version of OpenSusa and see how that works for you. If that works for you and you like that and you want to try other rolling release distributions at that point, then give Arch Linux a try. Really, there's no right or wrong answer here. It's one of those things. You say you're excited. If you're excited about Linux and you want to try all these Linux distributions out, I'd say, yeah, go for it, hop. What's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is something breaks and then you reinstall another Linux distribution and then give it a try. If that sounds like a bad idea to you, you can always just install these things in virtual machines. Try them out in a VM. And if it looks good in a VM, then maybe put it on real hardware. The next question is, hey, DT, have you thought about doing in-person podcast type content with other creators? Now, this is an interesting comment because I'm not exactly sure what he's asking here. When he says, have you thought about doing in-person podcast type content in-person? Is he talking about live, like somebody here in my studio? Because I thought about that. Obviously, it would be... people would have to come here for me to interview them here at the studio. If you're just talking about meeting on a Jitsie call or a Zoom call or whatever it is, some video conferencing software that we agree on and doing some collaborative effort, I've done a few of those in the past with various people. It's not something I do on a really regular basis, but I've done some of that in the past. But I'm assuming what he's asking since he's specified in-person is doing something live, interacting with an actual live human being here at my studio or if they've got a place or we could meet somewhere. Yeah, I'm always up for that. I have no problems. For those of you... I often get where am I located. Most of you guys know that I live in Louisiana. I actually live in Northeast Louisiana. Anybody that is interested in doing something like that, let me know if you're ever driving through this part of the world and maybe we could get together and do some kind of collaborative in-person event if you're a content creator or somebody in the Linux space. And the next question is, hey, DT, have you thought about making your own Linux distribution? I've thought about it, and it's something I don't want to do at all. I do kind of make my own Linux distribution. DTOS, which is my post-installation script for Arch Linux, that is essentially at the end of the day you get DT's Linux distribution, right? And I know people have a problem with the fact that DTOS, I say it's kind of like a Linux distribution. Of course, I name it DTOS, like DT's operating system, because I hear from people, DT, you really shouldn't call it an OS or a distribution because it's insulting to call your post-installation script that just installs your dot files a Linux distribution. Well, we should actually discuss this because do you guys actually know what is a Linux distribution? When you download an ISO and it installs a distribution for you, what is it actually doing? It's installing Linux, right? Some Linux, say it's an Arch-based distribution, it's installing Arch Linux, essentially a base Arch Linux, plus some extra stuff, which is the creator of that ISO's dot file. It's some config files, right? That's all I'm doing with DTOS. So in the end, the product is very, very similar. The only difference is I do it with a post-installation script, an online script that you have to execute rather than ISO. It's essentially a Linux distribution. I don't want to ever label it a proper Linux distribution because I don't want to support it. I don't have time, right? To me, I could actually build a really nice Linux distribution that would become very popular and I'd get thousands of people, maybe millions of people using it if I really promoted it. Of course, I have a very big platform that's something special, but it would become a full-time job. It would take away from this full-time job, right? I couldn't make the kind of videos or the number of videos about the topics I like to make videos about, right? It would really, it would really hamper what I do here, right? So it would be something, if I made my own Linux distribution, it would have to be, I would have to make that my full-time job. It would be my number one priority and do I really want to do that? Do I want to maintain a Linux distribution for a living? Absolutely not, right? It's not something I want to do. That's why I don't work in IT, system administration. That's why I tell you guys I'm not a programmer.  I don't want to do this stuff as a job. And the final question is, hey, DT, I love your videos. I'm not sure if you've already stated your opinions on this already, but I love about FOSS software, free and open source software, in government and high security environments. Should that software developed especially for them be made open source? Now that is a great question. So obviously I'm a big proponent of the free software movement, free software licensing, such as the GPL, and the other free software compliant licenses like MIT and BSD license, the Apache license, I love free and open source software. I love free and open source licensing. And I want that in as much stuff as possible. But, you know, you only need to license something under a free license if you're actually going to share it with people, right? If, in this case, you're talking about government and high security environment. So software, they're developing in-house for whatever clandestine government agency. Nobody's using it but them. They're never sharing it with the world. What does it matter what the licensing of that software is? They're never sharing it with anybody anyway. So, no, it doesn't need to be open sourced in my opinion because only if it's out in the wild and I can go get that software and I can do something with it, then I want it open sourced because if it's not open source, I can't do anything with it. But in this case, I'm not going to ever get my hands on any of this software, this government software anyway don't share it, it doesn't matter. And sometimes this question comes up from some of you guys especially those of you that are programmers or developers, you're just getting into open source software and you're working on something and you haven't released it public yet, right? It's not widely available, you're only sharing it with a few people an internal team of developers and some of you guys ask me about open source licensing and until you actually make it public, it doesn't matter. You don't have to make it open source if you're not sharing it with anybody, there's no reason. You can have a proprietary license on it as long as you're working on it before the public release but once you release it publicly then the licensing matters because then obviously those of us that are free and open source software proponents really want that thing to have a free license so we can do with your software what we want to do with it. Now one thing I do want to go back to the original question because he mentions should this software be open source because it's in government, high security environments and because he's asking specifically about high security environments and open source, it's almost like he's conflating the two almost it's almost like he's asking because their software is not open source, it's proprietary closed source it's just their in-house project maybe their software is less secure than it would be if they open sourced it and that's not necessarily the case generally speaking I often tell you guys though that open source software would typically have less security issues than proprietary software just because of the number of eyeballs on the source code the more people looking at source code the more likely you're going to find holes in it and then patch those holes right so but just because of that doesn't necessarily mean like the software that some of these high security environments and various government agencies it doesn't necessarily mean their proprietary software is riddled with holes or is somehow less secure because they didn't open source it again I'm a big proponent of free and open source software I would love if all software was free and open source software but in some situations it really doesn't matter and in this case because again it's not publicly shared software anyway I really don't care what they license that software as now before I go I need to think a few special people I need to think the producers of this episode and of course I'm talking about the following people Gabe James Maxim, Homie Stubald, Matt Mehmet Mitchell, Paul Royal West, Armored Dragon, Bash Potato Chuck, Commander Henry, George Lee, Marstrum, Methos, Nader, Yon, Paul, Peace Arch and Vador, Polytech Realities for Less, Red Prophet, Rollin' Tools, Devler, Willy and Zenibit, these guys they're my highest tiered patrons over these guys this episode of Haiti would not have been possible the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen all these names you're seeing on the screen right now these are all my supporters over on Patreon I don't have any corporate sponsors if you like my work want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon alright guys peace