Don't Lose the Plot Television Programme

Set in a rural area just outside Nairobi, Kenya, Don’t Lose the Plot features four young farmers given one acre of land each and nine months to turn them into successful farms. The four contestants were picked from a pool of 200 youth who applied. The producers ended up choosing people who would be free for nine months, had the passion, and were between 19 and 28 years old, because that is the intended audience of the show.

The farmers receive guidance and practical insights from agriculture experts on financial planning, planting strategies, agricultural inputs, and marketing. Contestants chose what activity they wanted to engage in and then pitched a budget of their expenses to the judges before getting funding for farm inputs. In the end, the farmer with the most profitable and sustainable farm will win an agricultural investment worth US$10,000.

The show aims to demystify the social and emotional barriers of starting a small business, challenge the societal prejudices against farming-related careers, and arm potential youth entrepreneurs with basic knowledge on the entire value chain. It also seeks to educate youth on the range of opportunities within the agricultural economy. Ultimately, it is hoped that audiences will learn from and emulate the contestants, and be inspired to own, lease, and run farms and agribusinesses of their own.

Don’t Lose the Plot is produced by Mediae, the creators of the popular TV series Shamba Shape Up and Makutano Junction (see Related Summaries below) and will be broadcast in Kenya, Tanzania over 13 episodes. The show will air on Citizen Television in Kenya in two major languages. In Tanzania, episodes in Swahili will be airing on ITV.

The television programme is complemented by a website, Facebook page and a Twitter account, which allow audiences to interact with the show and the contestants. The website features: profiles of the contestants, episodes for downloading, and information about the different issues dealt with in the programme such as finance (e.g., making a business plan, banking, and using mobile money), livestock, and crops.

The programme has also designed a web-based agricultural budgeting tool, Budget Mkononi, to help young aspiring and inexperienced farmers view estimated costs and revenues from various commodities such as potatoes, onions, and spinach. Through this tool, users can explore the relative profits of each commodity and visualise their cash flow requirements for the duration of the cycle. Users should be able to edit costs to reflect their specific circumstances, so that their budgets are realistic and personalised. They will be able to save them in order to refer to them later, and can share their budgets with their friends and family. The tool has been designed primarily for mobile phone users, as the majority of Kenyan and Tanzanian youth use their handsets to access the internet. Ultimately, Don’t Lose the Plot, through the Budget Mkononi tool, aims to show young farmers how to farm in a productive and sustainable manner.

Agriculture, Youth

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), most farmers around the world today are old, with the average farmer in Africa being 60 years old, despite 60% of the population being under 24.

Don’t Lose the Plot is supported by Feed the Future, the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative, and USAID’s Kenya and East Africa Mission through Feed the Future’s continent-wide capacity building programme, Africa Lead. Support to Mediae from Feed the Future and USAID is focused on increasing media content on the agriculture sector and opportunities for youth employment and development.