KOLU Zigbi

WKZ Consulting; Black Farmer Fund; National Black Food and Justice Alliance

My story began with my clan and village land in the Upper Guinea Rain Forest, where much of my family reside in Liberia, and finding pathways to meet basic needs which don't involve intense resource extraction (logging, mining). My values around community organizing, grassroots advocacy, interest in traditional indigenous knowledge and community wealth-building stem from that root. But I am equally inspired by the healthy and joyous feelings that emerge when I am in nature. I am animated by efforts to navigate and diminish challenges such as land grabbing, heirs property, land speculation, anti-Black racism and xenophobia, rural out migration and disinvestment, discrimination in lending etc. I am inspired by land collectives, community land trusts, radical hospitality, land-based healing, and experiments implementing businesses that support collective wellbeing.

I am excited about the resurgence of Black agrarianism, the Native American Land Back movement, the development of local/regional food systems and opportunities to support BIPOC food value chains. I am energized by the culture/mindset shift away from individualism and valuing land as private property toward interdependence and understanding land and water as complex systems upon which we all depend.