Untimely loss of Fidelis Wainaina

The late Fidelis Wainaina

Fidelis Wainaina, best known to Yara as the co-winner of the 2006 Yara Prize for an African Green Revolution, passed away on March 5, this year.

She was only 46 when she was diagnosed with cancer and succumbed to the illness shortly afterwards.

In 2001 Fidelis founded the Maseno Interchristian Child Self Help Group (MICH), which taught widows, orphans and street children at the village level how to farm better and sustainably, and planted trees in the tens of thousands.

When last in Oslo for the African Green Revolution (AGR) Conference in 2007, Fidelis spoke at length about her experiences with HIV/AIDS sufferers, which inspired MICH, her ongoing projects and her many plans for the future.

A soft-spoken, deeply religious woman, her basic faith and commitment to individuals came through in every thing she said and did. One story she told in Oslo was about Peter Ondeng, a nine-year-old boy at the center of her work.

"I met him when he was three years old, malnourished and weighing three kilos. When I started the program the doctor told me that that child would die anyway and I said: No, he wouldn't die. Against all odds, I started working with him, and with his grandmother who is now aged 64, and I want to tell the good news - today he is a partner solving the problem of the green revolution. Looking at this example, we see that the greatest partnership that we can make in Africa is partnerships with people," Fidelis said.

Close to the people

The story of Peter Ondeng and his grandmother Margaret mirrors Fidelis' journey from encountering AIDS victims through to her various efforts to help the rural poor in Kenya achieve self-sufficiency and then become independent entrepreneurs.

"When we visited (Peter) with Arne Cartridge (Yara’s Chief Communication Officer), his grandmother came out and greeted us and went round to show us her dairy goods project," Fidelis said.

Margaret proudly told Arne that she had become an entrepreneur and was now a fertilizer user, and that her bag of Yara’s Chapa Meli brand had increased her maize production from two to about ten bags. Imagine, Fidelis said, what we could do with 1,000 Margarets in that village.

"When I go to some of these homes and they come out in smiles, and I remember that the doctor said - don't waste your time on this child. Now he is living and part of a network that is transforming landscapes. For me, this is great, and shows the worth of the individual," Fidelis said quietly.

Last September Fidelis was excited about what to do with the sudden authority she had been granted by winning the Yara Prize, which she shared with Celina Cossa from Mozambique. 2007 Yara Prize laureate Akin Adesina had said he would like to visit her and see what they could accomplish together, and she was wondering how best to move forward.

Fidelis, with 2006 Yara Prize co-laureate, Celina Cossa

"I remember Arne saying: 'What do you want to do now - stay involved in the nitty gritty or open your thinking more to position yourself to mentor others?’ I am the kind of person who works with my heart, not my head. But I think it is very important to begin to think strategically, how I could help bake these small successes into a bigger cake," she said.

"My work takes me right to the grassroots. I am a field person. I enjoy coming out to see what is happening and what needs to be done. Now I am in demand to do international speaking. Someone asked me to spend a month in the USA - what would I be doing for a month in the USA?" she laughed.

Fidelis had an idea to find someone who could take on her duties for a while, and free up some time for international speaking, but when she described the challenge, it was hard to see how she would fill the position.

"I'm looking for a quality person with financial organization skills, who can do planning, inspire the staff," she said, and admitted that another hurdle would be that the ideal stand-in would do these things without concern for wages. Either way, Fidelis declared a goal of going back to western Kenya and planting a billion trees.

She thought back to the sequence of images projected onto the back of the stage as the 2007 Oslo AGR Conference began. In the first, there were farmers bowed over, working the fields. In the next, the farmers were gone and there were unbroken fields of green, giving Fidelis pause for thought.

Always a busy woman

"I think there is a lot for the scientific world to bring into the farming of Africa, and of course in revolutionizing it - but at the heart of this is the African farmer. We need to look at strategies that completely touch the heart of the African farmer, so that that person can stand up, not be so bent and preoccupied with feeding themselves that they are unable to show the way forward to the future," Fidelis said, always conjuring up the vivid image of real individuals.

Fidelis was indeed herself a real individual, set apart through her grassroots leadership and dedication, but as close to the people and cause she cared about as was humanly possible. Her death is a sad loss for Africa and for the African Green Revolution.