By Bakah Derick
The founder and chief executive officer of Cameroon's most successful greenhouse agriculture initiative; Greenhouse Ventures has charged a group of about 50 contemporary change makers and thinkers on the need to consider his line of actitiy as a sustainably profitable business in an economically challenging environment like Caneroon.
Roland Fomundam has been speaking in Bandjoun near Bafoussam within the context of a symposium on unraveling the development and underdevelopment notions of the African continent organised by SAVVY Contemporary from.thursday 31 March to Friday 1 April 2022.
Roland's first greenhouse constructed in Mbengwi
Started in 2013 after returning from the United States of America where he studied pharmacy, Biology and Business, the social entrepreneur settled in his native Mbengwi where he had plans to start what many considered a new form of agriculture because it was not yet in Cameroon.
"To do what I planed to do, I had to know the market and to know the market I had to know those involved who are the local farmers. To know them, I had to live with them so I know their challenges and how to improve." He said
With the assistance of some foreign experts, Roland Fomundam build his first greenhouse in Mbengwi which he says was with wood. Today, with the help of partners, Roland has built several highly productive greenhouses across Cameroon.
In 2021, Roland announced the creation of a greenhouse academy which is he said was intended for the transfer of knowledge in the development of greenhouse technology.
"His ideas are just incredible and worth immumilating especially young Cameroonians. To see a young guy who Will leave a comfortable life abroad to come.back home to do agriculture is a rare specie. His arithmetic about his farming activities is what makes it the most encouraging because with that kind of arithmetic, the hope of success is eminent and will make many others to want to be like him especially him." Ngwa Peter Lem-D foundation Niko Bafut and sympodium participant
The organiser of the Bandjoun symposium which he preferred to described as "invocations programme" Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung has appreciated Roland Fomundam for his decision to see Africa and home as a place that also merits such advancement.
The invocations programme according to Soh is "to open our year-long project on the 50 years of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa with an invocations programme here at Bandjoun Station to reflect together on the myths of development and underdevelopment as well as imagining and crafting a Post-(under)development world."