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- Mycopreneurs In Africa
This last weekend was a major milestone for the burgeoning mushroom movement in Africa - the 2nd Annual African Rising Mushroom Festival welcomed 1,013 students and children from across Uganda to the capital city of Kampala to learn about how mycopreneurism can help them build sustainable livelihoods in a region with few economic opportunities.
Renowned mycopreneurs William Padilla-Brown, Darren Le Baron, Omar Othman of Culture Shrooms and Aixa Hernandez of Myceliumatters joined me in presenting virtual talks on various aspects of mushrooms and their role in shaping the past, present, and future of the African continent and it’s many indigenous cultures.
I gave a talk titled “Fungi Diplomacy: Mushrooms Across Borders” that highlighted some of the mushroom entrepreneurs taking center stage across the African continent while showcasing similar mycocentric projects in places like India, Mexico, the U.S. and Haiti. The presentation focused on the overlap between global mushroom entrepreneurship and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. These photos taken of some of the students attending my virtual talk are something to behold-
One of the African mushroom companies I talked about to illustrate how people are leveraging the capabilities of fungi to go beyond food is called Mycohab, based in Namibia 🇳🇦 Mycohab is a pilot project that uses mycelium technology developed for NASA to cultivate edible mushrooms and turn the waste into building materials for making bricks. Check out what they’re up to below -
Another African mushroom entrepreneur I highlighted in the talk is Etimbuk Imuk, a Nigerian mushroom entrepreneur based in Lagos. Lagos is a sprawling mega metropolis with over 16 million people and is considered to be the high tech hub of the African continent. Google and Facebook both opened regional offices in the Nigerian capital in 2017 and 2018, and mushroom entrepreneurism is showing massive potential there alongside the innovation and sustainable development mushrooming out of the area.
Moving further South, South Africa has made waves in the. mushroom universe recently with the revelation that traditional healers in the region have long been using a species of Psilocybe mushroom in their craft. Mycopreneur podcast guest Cullen Clark and his colleagues have been instrumental in documenting and communicating the history and current practice of mushroom use in South Africa and Lesotho to the world. His work into the ethnomycology of Southern Africa has yielded a surprising amount of insights that trace fungi knowledge and use back thousands of years in the region via analysis of cave paintings, petroglyphs and anecdotal accounts from local healers.
This snapshot into the rise of mycopreneurism in Africa is just a taste of what is sure to come - or more likely, what’s already happening with no one reporting on the work. There are active mycopreneurial projects and fungi conservation field work underway in places like Rwanda, Congo, Madagascar, and surely many more areas across the African continent, and no doubt many more are being incubated right now.
The African Rising Mushroom Festival the global mushroom community support it has garnered are testaments to the power of mycopreneurism to uplift populations anywhere in the world, and it’s my sense that mushroom entrepreneurs in Africa will play a major role in shaping the future of that region and beyond.
This week’s Mycopreneur Incubator is happening tomorrow, Thursday at 5 pm east coast US time / 2 pm west coast US time. Here’s the invite:
Mycopreneur Incubator
Time: Nov 14, 2024 05:00 PM East Coast U.S.
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 886 9048 6744
Passcode: 995722
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Cheers and thanks for reading,
DW