Faculty: Land and Food Systems
Program: Master of Food and Resource Economics
Year: 2019
Country: Gambia
Jallow, who is described by his lecturers and mentors as very hardworking, patient and committed to excellence, is a recent graduate of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. Jallow’s life-long commitment to social responsibility stems from having grown up in Soma; a community in The Gambia where he observed firsthand how dependent households were on small scale farming and trading, but with little return to make ends meet. During his time at KNUST, he embarked on a give-back project called “Agrikafo”. Through Agrikafo, his team of young people established a network of smallholder farmers in his community and introduced them to the idea of union farming and the adoption of “microdosing” amongst other techniques geared toward enhancing their productivity and improving their standard of living.
It is this drive for the betterment of the developing world that motivates Jallow to join the Master of Food and Resource Economics (MFRE) program at UBC. He believes the program synergizes academic rigor with professionalism, inculcating graduates with the quantitative, analytical and policy analysis skill-set they need to transform the food and resource sector. Through the MFRE graduating project, Abdullah hopes to work closely with policy makers in his country in designing effective policies and setting the stage for a thriving food industry for generations to come. He is most looking forward to connecting well with UBC’s cutting-edge faculty, fellow scholars and exploring the amazing cultural diversity that Vancouver has to offer.