Bokashi Production Hub for Smallholder Farmers, Sierra Leone

My name is Mambud Samai. I grew up in Sierra Leone, survived its civil war, and spent years in a refugee camp watching amputees struggle to find a place in a world that no longer saw them. When I discovered regenerative farming on a nine-month learning journey in Japan, I saw something unexpected: not just a way to grow food, but a way to restore dignity and belonging.

That vision became Farming on Crutches (FoC).

Today, I don't stand alone. Lahai, Mustapha, Elizabeth, and over 100 trained amputee farmers have transformed personal adversity into agricultural leadership across Sierra Leone. Together, we've spent five years building an answer to a crisis now reshaping West African farming.

And at the heart of everything we teach has always been Bokashi.

Our Mission

Farming on Crutches believes in the power of healthy soil to heal people, communities, and land. We believe that every farmer — regardless of ability, background, or resources — deserves access to knowledge that makes them sovereign over their own food. This project extends that mission beyond our amputee community to every smallholder farmer in Sierra Leone facing an uncertain agricultural future, by establishing a Bokashi production hub that is self-sustaining ecologically, financially, and in knowledge.

The Crisis

Synthetic fertiliser costs have skyrocketed. For Sierra Leone's 70% of people dependent on small-scale farming, this is not abstract — it's survival. 

Farmers who relied on chemical inputs are finding them unaffordable, while degraded soils compound the problem.

Farming on Crutches has spent five years quietly building the answer.

The Solution: Bokashi

On our three-acre farm outside Freetown, we've perfected Bokashi — a fermented organic fertiliser made entirely from materials Sierra Leone already has: poultry manure, rice husks, molasses, and indigenous microorganisms harvested from our Eastern Province forests. Rice husks are abundant waste from the country's staple crop. Molasses is widely available as a cattle feed additive. Charcoal dust and wood ash are by-products of everyday cooking. Nothing in this system depends on imports.

Our approach is grounded in the global work of Colombian agronomist Jairo Restrepo Rivera, whose methods span more than 52 countries. His core principle — Bokashi produced entirely from local materials, zero purchased inputs — is what we practise. This is a proven methodology, adapted to Sierra Leonean conditions by people with deep local knowledge and community trust.

The breakthrough? Once we capture forest microorganisms, they multiply indefinitely on-farm using only rice bran and molasses. The forest gives once. The farm sustains it forever.

The Goal

This funding will establish a bokashi production hub on FoC's existing three-acre farm outside Freetown: a covered fermentation space, a small free-range poultry unit producing eggs for income and manure for Bokashi, basic equipment, and a Krio-language instructional video carrying the full method to every Sierra Leonean farmer with a phone.

The farm is the starting point, not the ceiling. FoC's 100-plus graduates, already working across multiple districts, form a ready-made distribution and peer-training network.

As Bokashi moves through that network, the hub becomes a permanent supplier and knowledge centre for Sierra Leonean agriculture at large: not just for amputees, but for every smallholder facing an uncertain future.

The goal is a system that feeds itself.

How We Regenerate

We work from the soil up.

Bokashi restores microbial life to land depleted by chemical farming, rebuilding the biological foundation that healthy crops depend on. Our closed-loop poultry unit turns farm waste into fertility. Our IMO multiplication process means the forest ecology of Sierra Leone — the soil microorganisms of Sierra Leone's Eastern Province forests — is captured once and cycled through farms indefinitely, improving with every season. As soils recover, application rates reduce year-on-year and farms become genuinely self-sustaining. 

We are not replacing one input dependency with another. We are ending dependency altogether.

Tracking Impact

In six months: the hub is producing Bokashi and supplying local farmers at prices well below synthetic fertiliser. FoC graduates are earning income through distribution and peer training.

In a year: participating farms show measurable improvements in soil health and yield. The Krio video is circulating through farming communities across Sierra Leone. 

FoC has become something larger than a training programme — a permanent, community-owned knowledge resource for the country's agricultural future.

In Numbers:

• 1 production hub established on FoC's existing 3-acre farm
• Estimated annual Bokashi production: 3–5 tonnes in year one
• Target farmer reach: 50–80 farmers supplied directly via the FoC graduate network
• 20+ FoC graduates activated as peer trainers and distributors
• Krio video target: 5,000+ views across farming communities in year one
• Income generated through egg sales and Bokashi sales to reduce FoC's dependency on external funding

Agricultural outcomes, economic outcomes, and knowledge reach will all be tracked. Because this project is community-led, qualitative data matters too — how farmers describe their relationship to the land, their sense of autonomy, their confidence in the future.

"We are not mere victims of war but Ambassadors of Peace."

This project is what that looks like in practice: a community that survived the worst, growing the food that feeds the future.