Haron Obong

Lira Seedlings is a community-focused, affordable seedling and floriculture business focusing on carbon-capturing trees and solutions for battling climate change, while training and employing local young people.

“Environmental degradation that led to global climate change affected my community farming system negatively, evidenced in the disappearance of rain. Malnutrition faced by poor teenage mothers who are not employed and can’t afford to buy organic supplements also made me stand up to look for solutions to these problems.

“We began to source seeds of carbon-capturing trees to propagate, like the teak tree and its average carbon intake is about 3.70 lakh tonnes each year for every 10m-30m tree. For malnutrition, we source high-content vegetable seeds and germinate them in our nurseries to sell, and in the process employ young people, especially teenage mothers, to help them learn as well as earn some money. Per season we employ over 200 casual staff, 99% youths, where 88% are teenage mothers.

“We’ve planted about 300,000 tree seedlings of different varieties that are carbon traps but also economically wise, constructed about 10 family-based urban garden structures across the city and opened five more nursery sites (outlets) across the country, and published a hands-on skill-based booklet.”