BERMUDA could become a powerful agricultural entity, according to one of Africa's leading voices on sustainable development.

Father Godfrey Nzamujo, founder and director of the Songhai Centre in Benin, West Africa, believes that the island's proximity to American cities gives it an excellent advantage as a centre for trade. And he believes the benefit by focusing on agriculture would be two-fold ? the cost of living in Bermuda would decline as a result.

The Songhai Centre is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to rural development by providing training in the production, research, and development of sustainable agriculture.

While here, Father Nzamujo will meet representatives from Government and other organisations to exchange ideas and practices on agriculture, the environment and also alternative energy development, and will visit key environmental and/or agricultural locations.

"I'm going to spend time talking with people from the Ministry of Environment, from Agriculture, one of my reasons for coming is to take the temperature, to know what is going on so that we can work," he explained.

"I'm going to spend two or three days looking at the reality; talking with people, and then after that we'll see what we can do together. There is an African proverb that says unless you come close to the river, you don't know in which direction it's flowing. So I'm going to come close to the river.

"I hope I (can raise interest in agricultural development in Bermuda). I think, being a small island and very close to big cities, it can be a powerful agricultural entity. As I understand it, a concern in Bermuda is the cost of living there.

"Whenever you import a lot of things, it makes an economy fragile. But if the fundamental things, the basic needs, in other words, food, is grown there, then you have bought in stability and inflation will be controlled. Any country that is based on importation will be very unstable; inflation and costs will be very high. So I think one of the basic thing to fight poverty and to fight inflation is to be fundamental in your thinking with regards to the economic structure."

Father Nzamujo began the Songhai Movement 18 years ago with a team of six school drop-outs on a one-hectare parcel of land at Ouando, a suburb of Porto-Novo in Benin. The growth of the movement has seen the development of a Centre and its transformation into one of the largest NGOs in Africa today.

"The idea behind the movement was to create an arena where the Third Wworld ? Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean ? could have a place to live a quality life," Father Nzamujo, who arrived in the island yesterday, explained.

"In any arena where we combine different (abilities) such as intellectual skills and social values to create a socio-economic environment, we have the end result that people lead quality lives." The priest ? a professor of engineering at the University of California ? said he was looking at images of drought-stricken Africa during the 1980s and decided that for all his education, he wasn't accomplishing much with it.

"I visited Africa and found it was extremely rich but extremely poor," he said. "Poor because the wrong economic equation was written for Africa. They were doing things not on their own count, but copying other people.

"So we designed this integrative system that takes into account the reality of the tropical countries ? where you can plant 12 months in the same temperature. We looked at what we had as an environmental capital and designed a system that corresponded to that reality, and this is the result of it."

He said he started with ten hectares of land ? written off as barren ? and from it managed to provide a steady successful bounty of crops during a dry season.

"That attracted a lot of attention and the government of Benin and other countries in West Africa got interested and gave us more land. We designed a system where nothing is wasted. There are three main parts ? animal production, crop production and fish production. The waste from one section becomes an input in another section.

"So it is an environmentally stable system where nothing is wasted. We call it ZERI ? Zero Emission Research Initiative. The droppings of the chicken, for example, are used to make compost which is used to create insect larvae which we use to feed our fish and the waste from the fish pond water which is rich in nutrients I use to irrigate our soil. Every year we cut down the cost of production and people became impressed because the inputs used were in the reach of many poor people. Nothing was working and it now flourishes, people are making their living, so that's how we got people interested in our work."

A similar model might be put to use in Bermuda, he said.

"I'm not going there to tell anybody (how to do their) business," he explained. "It's only when I've seen something ? seen what is going on and learned myself ? then we dialogue. And then we see how we can put a link together and exchange ideas and build something better.

"Obviously, I'm carrying kind of a determination to tell people that we can do things differently. I've done it under very difficult conditions. I'm carrying that gospel that we could really make the poor communities richer if we use our brains and our determination. I'm really coming to learn and to share and from that sharing I hope will do something very very profitable."

Those interested in sustainable development should join Father Nzamujo this evening in the Bermuda College Library where he will deliver a presentation entitled 'The Songhai Centre: A Flourishing Model for Sustainable Development' at 7 p.m. Admission is $20. For more information, telephone 234-6083.

More information can be obtained on the SERC web site at