Country of Residence
Nigeria
Age
19
Project title
SEED LEGACY
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
Seed Legacy is a youth-led initiative that builds community seed banks to preserve indigenous crop varieties, combat climate change, and rebuild intergenerational trust between elders and youth in Plateau State, Nigeria.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
https://www.instagram.com/seedlegacy_?dlrf=MWV5OHU5d3hkdmZ2dA==
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
My "aha" moment happened when I realized that the traditional knowledge of our elders was dying out alongside our crops. In Plateau State, climate change has made rains unpredictable, destroying harvests. When harvests fail, farmers lose the seeds they would have saved for the next season. I watched as elders, who hold generations of seed wisdom, were left feeling forgotten, while young people migrated to cities because they saw no future in agriculture. The spark was realizing that we were losing two things at once: our agricultural biodiversity and the trust between generations. I knew that if we could build a bridge between the elders' deep knowledge and the youths' energy and technology, we could create a sustainable solution. That realization led to the birth of Seed Legacy.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Nigeria has lost over 70% of its traditional crop varieties in the last 50 years. In Plateau State, smallholder farmers are trapped in a cycle of food insecurity. Climate change has caused erratic rainfall and prolonged droughts, causing 40-60% of harvests to fail in bad years. Because commercial agro-dealers only sell expensive generic seeds that often fail in local conditions, farmers are left with nothing when harvests fail. Beyond the agricultural crisis, there is a social crisis. The traditional system of elders sharing seeds and knowledge has broken down due to economic hardship and rural-urban migration. This has created a profound loss of intergenerational trust. Elders feel undervalued, and youth feel disconnected from their heritage. This matters deeply to my community because without climate-resilient seeds, families go hungry. And without bridging the gap between generations, we lose the social cohesion that makes our communities resilient to both climate and economic shocks.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
Seed Legacy creates community-owned "living seed banks" that are governed equally by elders and youth. Here is how it works in action: Partnering with Elders: We identify experienced farmers ("Guardian Farmers") who contribute indigenous seeds and traditional knowledge. We compensate them for their expertise, restoring their status as respected community leaders. Youth-Led Documentation: We recruit young people ("Seed Guardians") and train them to use simple mobile technology. They document the traditional knowledge and record how seeds perform in our communal trial gardens. The Resilience Index: We plant the seeds in shared trial gardens, testing them for drought and pest resistance. The youth input this data into a digital "Resilience Index," which tells every farmer in the network exactly which seeds survive best under climate stress. Seed Multiplication and Distribution: The best-performing seeds are multiplied and stored in our seed bank hubs, ready to be distributed back to farmers for the next planting season. This makes a difference because it turns passive preservation into active climate adaptation. It gives youth a meaningful, technology-driven role in agriculture, while ensuring farmers have access to free, proven, climate-resilient seeds exactly when they need them.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Since launching, we have moved from an idea to an active pilot. We have partnered with 8 Guardian Farmers across Plateau State, collecting over 10 unique indigenous seed varieties that were at risk of extinction. We have recruited 4 youth who are ready to be trained as Seed Guardians. We have also conducted community consultations with over 5 community members to validate our approach. Most recently, we became an awardee of the International Baccalaureate Global Youth Action Fund. The impact is both environmental and social. Environmentally, we are securing the genetic biodiversity of crops that can withstand climate change. Socially, we are rebuilding trust. Elders who felt ignored are now being honored as experts, and youth are finding a sense of purpose in protecting their heritage. Over the next year, we will establish our first fully operational seed bank hub and launch the Resilience Index. We aim to distribute these seeds to 50 smallholder farming households, securing their food supply for the next harvest and saving each family money they would have spent on failing commercial seeds.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
Traditional agricultural programs in Nigeria often fail because they are top-down: researchers develop a seed and tell farmers to use it, ignoring local knowledge. Seed Legacy reverses this. Our innovation lies in three areas: First, Farmer-Led Science: We don't invent new seeds; we document and preserve the proven, indigenous seeds that already exist in our communities. We turn farmers into climate scientists who test what works on their own land. Second, Intergenerational Co-Governance: Instead of treating elders as passive beneficiaries, we make them paid experts. Instead of treating youth as cheap labor, we make them tech-enabled data managers. Every seed bank is governed by a committee with equal voting rights for both elders and youth, actively repairing the social fabric of the community. Third, Open-Source Data: The Resilience Index we build will be freely accessible. Unlike commercial agro-dealers who sell seeds and data for profit, we are creating a public good. We are using existing mobile technology in a new context—bringing digital data collection to rural, low-literacy elders and youth in Plateau State. By combining ancient seed wisdom with modern digital documentation, we are creating a solution that is culturally respected, environmentally sustainable, and highly replicable. We are proving that the answers to climate adaptation aren't always new; sometimes, they are already in our hands.
How many people are on your team?
2
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
I Emmanuel Anthony am the Co Founder and Project Lead, overseeing strategy, community relations, and pilot management. Gil Jwander is the Co-Founder, leading data collection, youth training, and distribution logistics. We share leadership by making major decisions collaboratively, ensuring that both operational and on-the-ground community needs are met. We also work closely with our 8 Guardian Farmers who guide the agricultural decisions.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next year, our primary goal is to move from a pilot to a fully operational model. In the next three months, we will focus on infrastructure. We will use seed funding to build our first physical seed bank hub in Jos South, purchasing proper airtight storage containers to ensure the seeds we collected remain viable. We will also officially train our 15 Youth Seed Guardians on how to use the mobile app to record seed performance. Within six months, we will launch our communal trial gardens. Elders and youth will plant the collected seeds side-by-side to test their resilience against drought and pests. We will document this data to officially launch our first "Resilience Index." Within the next year, we aim to host our first "Seed and Story Fair" to distribute these climate-resilient seeds to our first cohort of 150 local farmers. We will also formalize our partnership with the Plateau Agricultural Development Program (PADP) to ensure our model can be scaled to other local government areas in Plateau State.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
We encourage others to join by making the problem visible and the solutions participatory. To engage our community, we use a model of shared ownership. We don't just ask people to join; we show them how joining benefits them. For the youth, we engage them through their smartphones and the promise of leadership training; they feel a sense of responsibility to document their grandparents' legacy. For the elders, we engage them through public recognition and small honorariums; we invite them to be the "Professors" of our project. We have already engaged 8 Guardian Farmers and 10 youth through word-of-mouth and community meetings. In the future, we will expand our reach by hosting "Seed and Story Fairs"—community events where farmers can come together to exchange seeds, share traditional folklore, and see the data on the Resilience Index. We will also use social media (Instagram and WhatsApp) to share visual updates of the trial gardens, showing other young people in Nigeria that agriculture is not a backward profession, but a space for innovation, technology, and climate action.
