THE SIERRA LEONE
SMART FARM VILLAGE
Project Leaders
Prof. Federico Perali
Prof.ssa Antonella Furini
Mayor Edward Yamba Koroma
Research Staff
Prof.ssa Michela Sironi
Dr. Maikol Furlani
Arch. Roberto Carollo
Arch. Francesca Benati
Eng. Giorgio Pascucci
Eng. Remo Tantalo
Dr. Elena Dalla Chiara
Prof.ssa Martina Menon
Prof.ssa Marcella Veronesi
Dr. Michele Baggio
Mr. France Nathaniel
The Sierra Leone
Smart Farm Village
Verona, december 2015
A SMART PROJECT BORN AND DEVELOPED
INTO THE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT
OF VERONA UNIVERSITY
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE
GOVERNMENT OF SIERRA LEONE
...TO PROJECT POOR PEOPLE
INTO THE FUTURE
...TO PLAN A NEW SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
MODEL FOR AFRICAN VILLAGES
The Sierra Leone Smart Farm Village is a sustai-
nable and replicable Village, at low footprint,
autonomous for food supply, energy and water
use
It is an agro-industrial local economy specialized
in rice and vegetable production used to nourish
the local population and for export
It is an healthy environment because designed to
be an hygienically safe site also thanks to the
construction with local materials of a modern
health center and a sustainable sewage system
The village is smart because well-educated local
people use advanced environmentally compati-
ble technologies, construction techniques (straw
housing, screw foundations, etc.), and complete
recyclying of organic and inorganic material
Interactions among village households in factor
and commodity markets create local income
linkages and feedbacks across sectors of the lo-
cal economy generating a virtuous circle foste-
ring sustainable economic and social growth
The village is a peaceful society because based
on the respect of traditional social norms and
the “just” distribution of tenure rights to families
The village sustainable development model
preserves the local environmental assets for fu-
ture generations while producing and consum-
ing local products, such as rice, fish and wood
from the village public forest
Both food and construction activitiea are at 0-
km
From the Study
to the Implementation
The Selected Development area:
Rokupr
North-East of Freetown
Rokupr
Demographic structure:
12,000 people
avg household size=6
64% below 24 years old
10% above 50 years old
The Social Analysis at the Village
Level
To create a sustainable village model is crucial to
know the social linkages and transfers across house-
holds, because only from the knowledge of this inter-
actions we can understand the likely effect of chang-
es in the economic context on household income and
food supply.
Our approach starts analysing the way people obtain
access to the goods they need to survive, socialize
and prosper.
For example, we analyse:
how people in different social and economic cir-cumstances get the food
The Local Village Economy
Our goal is to estimate the full impact of the deve-
lopment project from the social and the economic
point of view.
The Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Sierra Leone
and the SAM construction for the local village econo-
my permit us to realise an economic snapshot before
and after the project implementation.
With the SAM tool we can carry out a complete feasi-
bility plan to determine the total internal rate of re-
turn of the project to justify the investments
(Government, international banks, privates, etc) and
Richer
Households
Poorer
Households
Labour Natural Resource sales (fish, charcoal, firewood poles, etc)
Livestock, Fish
& Food
Livestock, Fish
& Food
Food & household goods
Food
Loans & gifts
Remittances
Village Regional Market Urban Centre
The Village impact analysis
We start analyzing the microdata from a National to a Local level and creating an organized database:
data from LSMS Living Standards Measurement Study - World Bank
microdata from Sierra Leone Households Survey
SIERRA LEONE Use of housing materials
Freq. Percent Cum.
Mud & Wattle 3,985 59 59
Burnt Bricks 425 6 65
Timber 65 1 66
Corrugated Iron Sheets 302 4 71
Stone 3 0 71
Cement/Concrete 1,957 29 100
Tarpaulin 4 0 100
Other 22 0 100
Total 6,763 100
KAMBIA DISTRICT Use of housing materials
Freq. Percent Cum.
Mud & Wattle 225 73 73
Burnt Bricks 24 8 80
Timber 8 3 83
Corrugated Iron Sheets 9 3 86
Cement/Concrete 40 13 99
Tarpaulin 3 1 100
Other 1 0 100
Total 310 100
From the construction of
Sierra Leone Social Accounting
Matrix to the ZOOM on ROKUPR
Smart Farm Village Economy
For example to plan the housing development we studied the microdata on housing materials, win-
To evaluate the impact
of the project
The Rokupr daily per capita GDP
Pre (Year 0) and
The impact of Smart Farm Village implemen-
tation
on Rokupr Gross Production:
3 round of investments, 5 Millions € per year
The impact of Smart Farm Village implemen-
tation
on Rokupr employment:
The first sketch of the economic and social
Sustainable Rokupr Village
18 Sub-projects for an integrated and sustainable deve-
The rice farm
1,000 ha for rice cultivation
General cost in the first three years: about 1,450,000 € (machineries, buildings and irrigation system)
Operative costs for each year: about 380,000 €
From 600 employees to 50 employees when tech-nologies are used (the workforce move from the agricultural sector to the manufacture and trade sectors). The cost for a working hour change from 1€ of the first year to 5€ in the third year.
Financial rate of return on investment (25 years, 5% discount rate): 34.52%
The fish farm
120 fish ponds in operation covering 7 ha of land, while another hectar will be reserverd for the fin-gerlings laboratory and breeding
General cost in the first three years: about 89,105€ per year (machineries, buildings and irrigation sy-stem)
Operative costs for each year: about 217,569€ (fingerlings, fertilizers, harvesting, maintenance costs, labor, other operative costs, transport, etc.)
8 employees. The cost for a working hour will in-crease of 1€ every five years, reaching the level of 5€/hour in year 25
Financial rate of return on investment (25 years, discount rate 5,00%): 10.07%
The livestock area
Batch size: 5000 birds/flock
General cost in the first three years: about 146,250
€ (machineries, buildings and equipment)
Operative costs for each year: about 380,000 € (day
old chicks cost,feed, medicine/vaccination, main-
tenance costs, labor, other operative costs, tran-
sport, etc.)
Financial rate of return on investment (25 years, 5%
discount rate): 7.49%
Financial net present value of the investment (25
years, 5% discount rate): 47,515.95 €
The forest nursery
The forest nursery will cover 84 Ha of land, that
will be useble to replace the 84 Ha of existing fo-
rest wich is going to be cutted due to have enough
sawn timber for the construction of 1000 houses,
500 in the fist 5 years and other 500 within year 10
1,000 mahogany seeds are going to be planted in
each hectar, for a total amount of 84,000 seeds,
that after 20 years can produce about 11,000 cu-
bic metres of sawn timber.
252 employees during the sivicultural season, and
50 employees during the maintenance season.
The cost for a working hour will increase from 1€ in
the first year to 2€ in the fifth year.
