Marcus is active in areas related to technology transfer and permaculture. He first connected with Dadamac in 2008, and visited Nigeria in September for the ecodome project.
He returned in 2009 for work on permaculture, and the email he sent while there is included in this blog.
Hi Vijay
I am glad that you chose the article on "Pushing up Farm Productivity" to share with us. It looks as if several group interests are overlapping around the topic of food production, and eco-friendly solutions.
I am very aware of approaches to food production and methods of growing things at present because Marcus Simmons is still sharing details of his recent trip to Africa. He was in Benin and Nigeria - and the main focus of his trip was permaculture. He went to Benin to learn more about permaculture as applied in West Africa, then went to share those ideas at Fantsuam and Attachab Eco-Villlage.
Marcus Simmons of Ecoshelter has helped people to construct eco-friendly buildings, including ecodomes, in various countries. He wanted to discover if the methods would work equally well in Africa. Dadamac enabled him to try things out. In 2008 Dadamac, Ecoshelter and Fantsuam Foundation collaborated to construct an experimental eco-dome at Attachab Ecovillage.
We have been supporting Oke-Ogun Community Development Network (OCDN), Attachab Eco-Village and the Yoghurt Project, and we hope to fundraise and help Zittnet with its last-mile connectivity.
The connection with OCDN goes back to Pam's early links with Ago-Are. The update is that Fola and PD are exploring ways to get the InfoCentre at Ago-Are connected to the Internet. Dadamac Foundation is supporting Fola with the cost of going online (more about this in the Dadamac Learners' news).
Last week on 3 December 2008 all the staff of Fantsuam Foundation visited the site of a dream – Attachab. Fantsuam’s founder and chairman John Dada’s vision is to create a self-contained eco-farm supporting the needs of the surrounding community and contributing to the economic development of the region.
For the time being, most new information about out work will come in through the blogs. If you log on to our site you can be emailed when new blogs are written. If you need to know something additional please email us.
We are putting project details up to give you a flavour of Dadamac and our sister organisation Fantsum Foundation (FF). By describing different things we are doing we can offer a glimpse of the range of our interests, networks and knowledge and it is our networks and knowledge we want to share with you, as much as any individual projects.
