Dr. Shawn Daly Travels to Zambia to Assist Farmers Association Improve Sustainability

For the past couple of years, Dr. Shawn Daly, director of student global experience and professor of marketing and international business at Niagara University, has traveled to Africa to assist farmers and entrepreneurs expand and manage their businesses as a volunteer with Farmer to Farmer, a USAID-funded program that provides technical assistance to farmers, farm groups, agribusinesses, and other agriculture sector institutions in developing and transitional countries to promote sustainable improvements in food security and agricultural processing, production, and marketing. This summer, he spent almost a month in Zambia, working with the Nyimba District Farmers Association.

The DFA, which represents more than 10,000 farmers, produces sunflower cooking oil that is sold to the general public, boarding schools, and local retail shops, and sunflower cakes that are purchased by livestock farmers. The association also rents out a truck and tractor and is piloting a plant that dries mangoes and bananas to make into chips.

From June 28 until July 22, 2024, Dr. Daly shared his expertise in financial management, business planning, sales and marketing with the 22 members of the DFA's board and staff so that they could develop business plans that will help them effectively run and successfully grow their businesses.

His trip began with a visit to the Ministry of Agriculture in Nyimba and a SWOT analysis with local farmers, which guided his discussions around economic sustainability and the processes the DFA uses in its plants. Dr. Daly also worked with the Petauke Chamber of Commerce to help executives and small business owners learn about chatbots and artificial intelligence.

"Most of my time in Zambia was focused on helping the DFA staff operationalize their existing five-year strategic plan through the creation of key performance indicators. We also conducted various financial analyses and marketing forecasts to determine which new products and machinery would be most beneficial for the DFA to implement," Dr. Daly said. "Zambia is a young culture and vibrant economy - the majority of staff and farmers I worked with were in their 20s and 30s. They are very receptive and open to new knowledge and applying it immediately to the issues at hand."

Dr. Daly previously traveled to Guyana in October 2022 and again in April 2023 to guide two Guyanese entrepreneurs as they transitioned from local providers of fresh juice and other related products to more mature companies, capable of competing with some of the larger companies in Guyana and abroad for shelf space and sales in the burgeoning retail marketplace. In May 2023, he spent three weeks in Rwanda, where he assisted a rural farm co-operative that makes pineapple and banana wines.

Dr. Daly has lectured extensively and appeared on national news programs concerning the use of AI, medical tourism, and B2B marketing and is the recipient of two Fulbright awards.