The Jews of Sub-Saharan Africa Are Blazing New Trails with High-Tech Farming

Aug. 23 2023

South of the Sahara Desert, there are a number of small communities that either claim ancient Jewish descent (like Ethiopian Jews and the Lemba of Zimbabwe) or whose ancestors came to Judaism via Christianity in recent times (like the Abayudaya of Uganda). Recently, several of these communities—scattered across ten countries—have joined together to make use of the latest innovations in agriculture. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

An unusual experiment in data-driven agriculture is underway in the Abayudaya Jewish community in rural Uganda: a pilot poultry farm. From the moment chicks arrive at a day old until their sale at day 36, nearly every move and morsel they take ends up charted on a carefully cultivated spreadsheet. . . . [F]ounded in 2021, the AMC Pilot Broiler Farm is now on its way to upscale to over twenty times [its original size] after the purchase of the Jewish community’s first-ever owned piece of land of approximately six hectares.

The Times of Israel was recently invited to Uganda to witness the next steps of the poultry project—which, with a profit margin of 15-20 percent for each batch of chicks is an unqualified success—and meet Sam Muwalani and Allan Zilaba, the dreamers who are determined to take their Abayudaya communities off the charity train. “Inspired by Jewish values, we empower people in poverty to be more self-reliant and self-sustaining,” the two wrote in a prospectus on their agricultural project’s vision.

[When], during the COVID-19 epidemic, community members lost their jobs and started to go hungry—and then to starve—the already disadvantaged African Jews’ needs dramatically increased.

Historically, the majority of Abayudaya are farmers, cultivating yams, peanuts, cassava, and more. However, this is the first time that data are driving their methodologies and decisions. In a country in which families still make their own charcoal using millennia-old techniques, “new” can be a bit unnerving.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: African Jewry, Farming, Technology, Uganda

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict