Sentientism Nigerian Food Revolution - Hakeem Jimo of Veggie Victory and ProVeg Nigeria - Sentientism 196
Hakeem Jimo is co-founder and CEO of Veggie Victory, Nigeria’s first plant-based food tech company. Hakeem and his partner, Bola Adeyanju, also founded Nigeria's first vegan restaurant, V Café, and now 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?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
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"
24:35 A Better Future?
48:41 Follow Hakeem
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/hakeemjimo/ - https://veggievictory.com/ “We are winning with the veggies!”
- https://proveg.com/ng/...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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