Nigerian food revolution - Hakeem Jimo

Hakeem is co-founder and CEO of Veggie Victory, Nigeria’s first plant-based food tech company. Hakeem and his partner, Bola Adeyanju, founded Nigeria's first vegan restaurant, V Café, and now also run the VChunks meat alternative product company - designed to help veganise Nigerian cuisine. Hakeem is also country director for ProVeg Nigeria.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & open.spotify.com/show/3c9OG5M....
00:00 Clips!
00:36 Welcome
01:59 Hakeem's Intro
- Nigerian father, German mother, growing up in Germany, now in Nigeria
- 10 years of veganism and vegan entrepreneurship
- Establishing ProVeg Nigeria
03:45 What's Real?
- Not much supernatural thinking in small-town Germany "there were more cows than humans"
- Lutheran evangelical protestant society but "we went to church twice a year... it was not a very religious background"
- Nigeria: "A completely different ballgame... the spiritual, religious world plays a much bigger role in Africa... religion is everywhere here... and I like it... In Africa I started to pray... you don't have that sense of control."
- Christianity, Islam as well as natural / traditional religions from the pre-colonial era
08:33 What Matters?
- "Every day I see these two sides", Germany (enlightenment, studying philosophy) and Nigeria (travelling as a journalist in W.Africa: "a completely different way people see the world")
- Only recently exploring the Bible (via podcasts) "just to understand historically"
- Finding references to treatment of animals in the Old and New Testaments
- Nigeria: "Religion is much more taken... by the letter" vs. the German way "it's just a parable"
- "If you're coming from a western background you just shape your belief system" vs. "people are handing over authority to another level"
- "How do we actually convince people... whether I'm in Germany or Nigeria?"
- "I walk through the streets here... it's funny... even though everybody is black and in Germany everybody is white I see features... very similar behaviours"
- "I see really the universal parts... that's where things come together... trying to change the world and not just a few enlightened people"
13:16 Who Matters?
- Step-father in Germany was a farmer "neighbours got together and bought a pig... the butcher coming to the farm"
- Hearing stories about factory farming "they were using nicotine to disinfect the chickens... there's something wrong here"... overfishing... foot and mouth disease
- "Nobody in rural Germany was talking about #sentientism or #veganism "
- University in Hamburg "there was an alternative meal in the canteen"... a vegetarian partner aware of history of US colonialist animal agriculture
- Travelling to West Africa and eating #streetfood "when I'm on a #vegetarian diet I don't get sick!" vs. getting typhoid fever from a road-side meat barbecue
- "You start learning... what's the implications... I realised... this is good... let me become vegetarian"
- "It took me almost 20 years to realise that leaving out dairy is another huge step... the #dairy industry is completely insane... even worse!"
- Animal ethics mostly came in later
- Patterns of diet. Eating animal products every day is a recent invention "the first and the last generation that eats so much meat"
- "In Africa... if you talk to elderly people... in the villages... they don't each much meat"
- But with factory farming availability "suddenly you have chicken wings for lunch"
- "If we would come back to the old days... where meat was consumed on special occasions... that would be a big step forward"
- "I live in Africa now I have to be pragmatic... because I want to see results"
- An upcoming #GreenIslam summit thinking of declaring factory farming #haram "that is much more pragmatic than saying 'eating animals'"
- "Hopefully we'll get to 100% leaving animals out... but we need to get the big wins now... if we can stop factory farming that's a big step... then we get to the last 20%"
24:35 A Better Future?
- Consumption of animal products in Nigeria is ~10% of that in the west
- "The average African is eating 6kg of chicken in a year... the American is eating 120kg"
- "The consumption of animals is actually very low on the African continent... we are very plant-forward eating... we have to acknowledge that"
48:41 Follow Hakeem
- / hakeemjimo
- veggievictory.com/ ‪@veggievictory4525‬
- proveg.com/ng/
& much more... (sentientism.info for full notes) #sentientism
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[@Sentientism]

If you prefer audio, here are the links to the Sentientism podcast: 🍎apple.co/391khQO 👂pod.link/1540408008. Ratings, reviews & sharing with friends all appreciated. You're helping normalise "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings" sentientism.info. Everyone is welcome in our online communities - come join us: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

[@LouisGedo]

Looking forward to this discussion

[@Sentientism]

Thanks for watching Louis!

[@efortunywhitton]

Love Hakeem's logic & critical thinking as to the best way to get people where he is geographically, to opt for a vegan meal, and slowly make them see that it's the healthiest option. He makes so many good points: [paraphrasing] you hook them with one angle [health], and the rest will come. This is something that many vegans I think stress over: that so-and-so isn't changing for the non-human animals, etc., but at the end-of-the-day, it's the change that matters, however it occurred; I agree with Hakeem: the rest will come. It's good to have practical people within the vegan movement; people that understand that one has to be nimble to bring about this change. 👏 😊❤ Go #vegan #sentientism

[@rwess]

I know Germany and large parts of Africa (not Nigeria). Interesting point about more "sense of control" and less religiosity - less "control" and more religiosity - 7:13. Rings true to me.
Since the world is tending toward less control (more war, climate change, the advent of AGI, etc.) maybe we need a new strongly sentiocentric religion. Naturalistic Sentientism, based in evidence and reason, may be less effective in an out of control world? 😁
Adherents to veganism should be given the rights accorded other religions anyway, and in some ways are...
Maybe some messianic "new sentientist" will emerge when things get really out of control ? 😇

[@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices]

38:15
authoritarian:
essentially, a synonym for “dictator” (see that entry, below). Just as in the case of the term “dictator”, this word is most often used as a descriptor for a leader or a ruler who imposes his or her own will upon a population, almost exclusively in a NEGATIVE way.
HOWEVER, it is important to understand that the term “authoritarian” originates from the root “author”, which simply refers to one who creates or originates something, via the word “authority”, which entails the right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. Therefore, genuine authoritarianism is a dharmic concept, because when one exercises his or her authority over his/her subordinates, it contributes to social cohesion. Indeed, human society cannot survive without proper authoritarian systems in place. It is absolutely imperative to very carefully read the Glossary entries for “dharma” and “authority” in this regard.
Therefore, it is strongly suggested that English speakers use words such as “fascistic” and “tyrannical”, instead of using the unfairly-deprecatory terms “authoritarian” and “dictator”, in reference to rulers who exercise ILLEGITIMATE dominance over a populace.
authority:
the right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. See the Glossary entry for “author” for the etymology.
The notion of AUTHORITY is intimately connected to the person or body that originates something. The author of a novel is, by definition, the preeminent AUTHORITY over his work. He has the AUTHORITY to dictate how his book ought to be published, promoted, and distributed. Furthermore, he has the AUTHORITY to delegate such rights to another person or company, if he desires.
Likewise, a mother has full AUTHORITY over the children she (pro)creates. No sane individual would ever dare presume that a mother has no AUTHORITY over her own offspring! Similarly, as the head of his family, a father has the AUTHORITY to direct the actions of his wife/wives and his children. Of course, that father is not the ultimate authority on earth - he has his own masters, such as his own father, his uncles, his employer (if he is a worker), and most importantly, his spiritual master, all of whom should exercise their authoritative positions in relation to that father. Similarly, a true king (as defined in Chapter 21) has conditional AUTHORITY over his people, even if not every single one of his edicts is perfectly in accordance with dharmic (righteous) principles. A monarch’s AUTHORITY is compromised only in the event that his rule sufficiently devolves into some kind of unholy, fascistic tyranny. And if a king’s dominion was to devolve into such a tyranny, it would robustly imply that he was never a genuine monarch in the first place.
Unfortunately, *authority* is often conflated with the notion of *power* , by both the masses, and in most dictionaries. Theoretically, any person or organization can display a force of power over another entity, yet that does not necessarily signify AUTHORITY. Thankfully, power does not always correlate with AUTHORITY. If that was the case, humble, gentle monks such as Gautama Buddha and Lord Jesus the Christ would, of necessity, have very little AUTHORITY, whereas powerful governments would have the AUTHORITY to dictate imperatives to its citizens, when in fact they do not, as they are almost exclusively illegitimate (that is, against the law, or dharma). N.B. Read Chapters 21 and 22 to understand the distinction between a legitimate government and an illegal government.