ORGANIZATIONAL

PROFILE
Background

Somali Youth Agriculture Association – SYAA – was established in 2018 in

Borama with a focus at the time on droughts and climate change in order to assist
the returnee population who had their homes and livelihoods destroyed during
the droughts and food shortages in the 2012. Since its establishment,
SYAA has expanded its activities and has ventured into early recovery and
development. SYAA has its Head Office in Borama with the regional branch
offices in Burao, Borama and Beledweyne , and many regions.
SYAA’s approach is an innovative community-based participatory learning
approach aimed at empowering marginalized groups to be engaged in areas that
affect their lives. Throughout all the stages of the project cycle, our approach is a
bottom-up process; it is a community-driven and people-centered approach.
Our belief is that good governance, human rights and democratic principles need
both vertical and horizontal support.
This paradigm requires developing effective linkages and strengthening
meaningful relationships at different levels (national, sub-national and local
levels).

Mission
SYAA is engaged in to deliver science and innovation that advance the
transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.
Agriculture Development organization is non-governmental, non-profit seeking
organization that endeavors to promote agricultural sector, farmers’ capacity and
environmental protection and conservation in order to empower and improve
livelihood conditions of the poor agro-pastoral community in Somaliland
through rights-based approach.

Vision
SYAA envisages a productive and self-reliant society living in healthy
environment where citizens have good quality of life and equal access to national
resources.
SYAA is non-profit professional association dedicated to improving agricultural
development in Somalia

Core Values

1. Transparency
2. Accountability
3. Neutrality
4. Participatory decision making
5. Non discrimination
6. Commitment
7. Incorporation of Islamic teaching and positive Somali Culture
Goals

 To protect human rights

 To facilitate access to production
 To enhance food security
 To provide psycho-social support for survivors
 To promote peace building process in target areas
 To provide support and capacity building to the Agri-training
 To provide capacity building to the staff
 To empower youth livelihood programs
 To empower generation/young girls with education in order to reduce
illiteracy rate in the community.
 To encourage the participation of Somali youth, social, economic and decision
making.
 To counsel and support victim of human rights violation.
 To assist youth in setting up income generating activities in the field of
agriculture.

SYAA coverage areas

The organization operates in North Eastern Kenya and regions including

South/Central Somalia (Hiran, Bay, Bakool, Middle/Lower Shabelle, Benadir,
Galgaduud and Mudug.)

Areas of Intervention

 Program areas

 Agriculture and livelihood development for rural communities

 Environmental protection
 Watershed management and sanitation in rural areas
 Humanitarian Emergency operations.
 Gender Empowerment

 Advocacy

SYAA use both international and national media groups as tools for advocacy
and public campaign to address issues that affect the most vulnerable groups.
Another form of advocacy strategy used by SYAA includes travels abroad to be
the voice of the voiceless and bring their plight to light. It is through this sort of
advocacy that we have been able to receive important figures from international
community to our offices.
  Agriculture Approach and methodologies
To effectively increase the capacity of the farmer community in Somaliland,
SYAA utilizes two main approaches of:

I. Sustainable agriculture
SYAA believes that sustainable agriculture provides high yields without
undermining the natural systems and resources that productivity depends on.
Below are the most common sustainable agriculture techniques introduced through
agriculture extension packages and farmer community capacity development that
employed by farmers to achieve the key goals of weed control, pest control, disease
control, erosion control and high soil quality: valuable innovations within these
approach are also;

 Crop Rotation
 Inter-cropping
 Cover Crops
 Natural soil Enrichment

II. Conservation Agriculture

Conservation Agriculture (CA) is a Concept for resource-saving agricultural crop
production that strives to achieve acceptable profits together with high and
sustained production levels while Con-currently conserving the environment. CA is
based on enhancing natural biological processes above and below the ground.
Interventions such as mechanical soil tillage are reduced to an absoluteminimum,
and the use of external inputs such as agrochemicals and nutrients of mineral or
organicorigin are applied at an optimum level and in a way and quantity that does
not interfere with, ordisrupt, the biological processes.

CA is characterized by three principles which are linked to each other namely:

 Continuous minimum mechanical soil disturbance and direct seeding.

 Permanent organic soil cover.
 Diversified crop rotations in the case of annual crops or plantassociations in
case of perennial crops.

(CA) practices can create stable living conditions for micro and macro-organisms,
providing a host of natural control mechanisms for the growth of crops, which
result in significant efficiency gains. CA has proven to contribute to significant
increases of crop production (40-100%) with decreasing needs for

 Achievements
 Empowering farmers in whole country: united they stand, dived they fall
In recent years, the concept of farmer empowerment has increasingly
become an important part of the development agenda being widely
regarded as the most sustainable approach to helping poor farmers in
becoming more productive. In fact, farmer empowerment is widely
accepted as a precondition for demand-driven development with farmers
articulating their demands. Hence, farmer cooperatives have the potential
for providing a common platform for joint action through which small-
scale farmers can gain the advantage of economy of scale in accessing
services and markets. Moreover, farmer empowerment supports farmers to
become strong actors in other areas that influence their livelihoods, such as
education, health and land tenure rights. Farmer cooperatives tend to
succeed if:
•Farmers can autonomously manage themselves with minimal government
interference, and
•Farmers become active participants in the decision-making process at the
community and district
level.
Over the past years SYAA had initiated and established 50 farmer cooperatives
throughout the country. Around 2800 households were registered as members of
the farmer associations.

Project photo: Farmer cooperatives training

An approach to rural development that involves farmers in decision-making is
consistent with the increasing democratizing process in Somalia. SYAA has since its
establishment in 2018 been providing valuable technical and materials support to
local farmers. At this stage, SYAA has realized the need to introduce a rights-based
approach and gender mainstreaming to its programming since the poor – including
farmers have inherent rights to demand development assistance. The most practical
way of achieving this is the formation of farmer associations which could act “as
catalyst for change” at the farmers’ level.

 Legal aid assistance and representation

SYAA provides legal aid to economically disadvantaged people and minority

groups who are detained in police stations and main prison in the whole country.
SYAA also organizes workshops, forums and radio debates aimed at increasing
the awareness of the community toward individual rights.
SYAA Core Staff

Board Of Director

1. Chair person
2. Treasure
3. Secretary
4. Member

Management Team

Name Position Qualification Years of Work

Experience
Executive Director BA Development Studies 13 years

Program coordinator M.sc in Agriculture 12 years

Admi/finance officer BA Business 12 years

Administration
M&E Officer B.sc Agriculture; 13 years
Advanced diploma in
M&E

Project Manager B.Sc in Agriculture 15 years

Project Manager B.sc in Bio-chemistry 14 years

Project Manager B.sc in Agriculture 6 years

Project Manager B.sc in Agriculture 9 years
extension
Engineer B.sc Environmental 4 years
engineering
Field Officer Advanced diploma in Ag. 4 years
extension
Field officer Advanced diploma in Ag. 4 years
extension
Field Officer Diploma in Ag. extension 6 years

Chief accountant BA in business 5 years

administration
Field Officer Diploma in Agri. 5 years
Extension
Cashier BA accounting 4 years
Gender Officer 4 years
Communication officer Advanced Diploma in IT 5 years

Logistics Advanced diploma in 6 years

Logistics and ware house
management

SYAA international partners

  Food and NFI distributions
SYAA in close collaboration with international agencies and Somali
Diaspora distribute food, Non Food Items, dignity kit and solar lanterns to
the food shortage affected by both manmade and natural disasters .

 Enhancing crop processing and value adding capacity

SYAA had been trying to provide crop processing and value adding
initiative for the past years. The aim of this is to enable farmer communities
to have the capacity to process their local raw products.
So far, the idea has given farmers enough capacity to process local food
products and add value to their crop. The main activities SYAA does in this
sector are of;

 Provision of simple technology crop grinding machines

 Provision of modern oil crop seeds extraction machines

 Train local women groups on food processing initiatives

 Train women groups on value adding innovations

 Linking farmer products to the market

Shacabka, Borama-Somalia Tell: +252636729209/618393851 Email: [email protected]