WHO: My Background: Olowogbon Toyin is a 31year-old agricultural economist and currently on his PhD programme at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. He holds a certificate in occupational health and safety management. He is a passionate agricultural health educator. He has been involved in voluntary agricultural health training for farmers and other stakeholders in agriculture in his community in recent years.
His academic and professional interests are in the areas of Agricultural Health & Safety, Environmental & Resource Economics and Productivity Management in Agriculture. He has published widely in international peer reviewed journals and conferences in these areas. Notably, among his conference presentations are his presentations at the international conference of the international society of agricultural safety and health (ISASH) USA in 2014 and 2015.
He is a practicing farmer and consultant in the area of agricultural health and safety/farm safety in Nigeria. He is a member of many professional organizations including International society of agricultural safety and health (ISASH) and young platform for agricultural research and development (YPARD).
WHAT: My project idea is on ‘African E-farm safety and health network’. This is an online e-learning platform with course wares for training agriculturalists on agricultural health. He intends to have a website dedicated to agricultural health/farm safety programmes where course modules are made available to interested participants to access, read, take test/quiz and received an electronic certificates on completion.
The site will also provide access to agricultural health data base, and publications on the same area. A peer reviewed modules will be developed to target African agricultural systems. Awareness will be created using social media to encourage participation especially among farmers, agri-professionals, students, researchers, and agri-stakeholders. This project will have high socio-economic impact in Africa and will be sustainable through regular updating.
WHY: My motivation for this project is hinged on the results of my studies in Africa. Most Nigerians and Africans are engaged in Agriculture. African agricultural sector is being revolutionised as youth are beginning to participate in Agriculture. Most of this population though in rural area have access to internet. Nigeria, the giant of Africa is reputed to have internet population penetration of 51% and 28% of the Africa’s internet penetration share. This shows the viability of the e-training model for this project.
Empirical evidence have shown that there is poor agricultural health /farm safety training among farmers in Africa especially in ergonomics, pesticide safety and biological hazards. The attached pictures to this project was one the incidence of an exposure of a farmer to a biological hazard in my community. This exposure cost him about 30 work day loss. This could have been prevented by the use of protective gears.
Nigeria, as a country will not just find this project beneficial but the African continent as a whole will find it refreshing and educative. This project will help in awareness raising on farm safety, reduce the incidence and burden of farm accidents and enhance making agriculture a safe occupation on the African continent.
HOW: In achieving this goal, course modules will be developed, sent out to competent reviewers, data base hub will be developed, relevant publications will be gathered, website will be developed, the project will be piloted, the web will be launch, and social media will be engaged for awareness creation.
About 70 farmers in my community have found my voluntary farm safety training useful in recent times. Olowogbon has written two books in this area. One titled: A Systematic Approach to Health and Safety in Agriculture; a global approach available at https://www.lap-publishing.com/ and the other one Safety on the farm: a fresh Perspective to African Agriculture (In-press). He has also published dozens of articles some published by African Newsletter on Occupational health and Safety available at http://www.ttl.fi/AfricanNewsletter.
HOW TO MEASURE SUCCESS: The success of this project will be measured by the statistics of visits to the site/network and the number of participants that completed the courses and downloaded the e-certificates.
BUDGET: if given the $5000 start-up grant. It will be judiciously expended on the bill of the following:
(1) Fees for website development and maintenance, ($1500).
(2) Internet access fees ($200).
(3) Resource purchase such as journal articles, books, software for the preparation of course wares, data base and certificates ($2000).
(4) Purchase of a laptop ($300).
(5) Service charge for review activities and consultants ($1000).
Timeframe for preparation and launching the project is 9 months.
Blogpost and picture submitted by Olowogbon Toyin (Nigeria): olowogbonsamuel[at]gmail.com
The content, structure and grammar are at the discretion of the author only.
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Vecinoo! Good job!