One morning in April 2024, in a yellow rice field in Bailundo, Huambo, Angola, a group of locals could not be more ecstatic to see the ripe wet rice grown by the Vietnamese in their land. They touched, smelled, and felt the first-ever crop in the southern African country, home to a labyrinthine system of sub-Saharan desert and adverse conditions for wet rice cultivation.

The harvest is the result of countless efforts that Pham Quang Linh, a 27-year-old Vietnamese man, and his team have made for years, following several rounds of pilot farming.

Lindo, one of the Quang Linh-led Africa Team, said he never imagined he would see one day a bumper crop of rice in his country which is plagued by degraded soil and drought, especially as the growing process requires meticulous care and ingenious techniques.

According to Quang Linh, the team put lots of work into bringing seeds from Vietnam, spending time, and applying suitable growing models, techniques, and care.

Linh Philip, a member of the African Team, said the crop alone took three and a half months. They plan to expand the growing area in Chilembo Hamlet in the dry season.

The news that Vietnamese people successfully grow rice in a deserted African country has made headlines in the media and sparked admiration for Quang Linh and his companions, who pioneered wet rice farming in Angola, some 10,000 km away from their home country.

It was so hot that the Angolan Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, António Francisco de Assi, came to the farm to give the team some encouragement. He praised their agricultural models and described the rice harvest as a “miracle.” There, he bought 5kg of rice to try the food staples that originated in Vietnam.  

Whatever the model, Quang Linh always sought ways to teach the locals how to master farming techniques. He said: “Give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.”

On a visit to Quang Linh Farm in April 2024 to witness the ripe rice field, the chairman of Bailundo Town told the villagers that it’s good to work with Vietnamese people and that they should learn from them to teach others to improve their homeland. 

The rice field belongs to the 30-ha Quang Linh Farm in Huambo Province, which has fish ponds and grows a variety of crops like corn, potato, onion, sweet potato, jicama, cucurbit, and strawberry, among others. Many kinds of them were brought from Vietnam. The farm also raises many animals that Angolans have never tamed or bred at home, like ducks, quails, and rabbits.

Tien Tuti, a team member, said it was impossible to count how much effort they have put in since Quang Linh bought the land lot to turn it into a fertile farm. Dozens of Vietnamese and Angolans had joined hands to dig up tree roots, plow, and improve the land before they could begin farming and raising livestock.

The villagers expressed their admiration for the team's creative farming models, especially for storing water for irrigation and raising fish in the very absorbent area.

More specially, Quang Linh Farm operates in the spirit of sharing. As well as creating jobs for locals, teaching them how to farm, and paying them monthly and daily wages, the team also provides the villagers with crop yields.

Quang Linh said sharing crop yields provides them with direct assistance and unites the community. 

The African Team initially is made up of four Vietnamese namely Quang Linh, Dong Paulo, Hung Kaka, and Linh Philip, and five Angolans: Lindo, Maitiloi, Victori, Fendi, and Doimingu. 

They have distributed dozens of tons of rice to locals and built hundreds of kindergartens, schools, and houses for the poor. Most notably, the team has hired Vietnamese workers to drill hundreds of wells in different rural parts of Angola.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Angola Duong Chinh Chuc praised the idea of digging wells as a way to help residents settle down. “Drilling wells for people is the most important thing as a stable life can only be attained with water, it encourages people to settle down and stop being nomads. It’s an amazing tale,” said the Ambassador during a visit to Quang Linh Farm in August 2023.

“You've made a sincere and committed effort. It’s going to be hard to make it here if you’re not determined. This kind of volunteer work is extremely beneficial as it can improve the people’s quality of life and foster closer ties between the two nations. I believe that you have made every Vietnamese visitor here proud,” emphasized the Ambassador. 

In 2016, Pham Quang Linh, a native of Nghi Loc District in Nghe An, a central province of Vietnam, went to Angola to work as a construction worker under a labor contract. After working on construction sites for a while, he saved up and opened an ice-making plant in the capital city of Luanda.

Some people came from remote rural areas of Angola to work at the factory, including Matiloi, who lives in Sanzala Village, Bailundo District, Huambo Province, nearly 600 kilometers from the capital.

During the holidays, Quang Linh’s group went to Sanzala Village to visit Matiloi’s family. Witnessing the destitute lives of locals, Linh spent his money to provide them with meals, rice, and necessities. With a tight budget, he also sold his old car to have money to help the poor.

“The rich-poor divide is very wide in Angola. Homes without beds and grass roofs are inhabited by extremely impoverished people in isolated villages. I have never seen a place so backward, yet they continue to lead happy, carefree lives,” the young man said.

It was also around this time (2019) that he launched the YouTube channel “Quang Linh Vlogs – Life in Africa”, where he shared his life and charity work in Africa, garnering public attention and support. 

Once the ice-making factory and the YouTube channel were profitable, Linh formed the African Team which gradually organized larger-scale charity projects for local people.

Realizing that Sanzala Village had never had access to clean water, the team donated money to hire a well-digger to create a source of water for the people. Seeing that people had no electricity, they installed a solar power system to distribute power to each house.

“Both young and old gathered in large numbers as they were ready to turn on the light bulb to illuminate the village for the first time in 126 years. They were all crying and shouting with joy,” Linh recalled. 

Many children are born in these remote areas but instead of sending them to school, parents force them to work at home. With the team, he built and repaired schools, went door-to-door to organize people, and sent 5,000 kids to school over two years.

After carrying out humanitarian work in eight Angolan mountain villages, he concluded that, in the long run, it was more important to give the native people “fishing rods” than “fish”. So he worked with the group to teach them how to practice Vietnamese-style farming.

With an extreme climate of six months of rain and six months of drought and the lack of basic agricultural knowledge among the local population, maize and soybeans are only planted during the rainy season and stored for use during the dry season. However, hunger persists because of the prolonged drought and insufficient food reserves.

When the villagers are idle during the dry season, Linh’s team starts teaching them how to dig ditches, drain water from streams, and practice year-round agriculture using Vietnamese farming methods.

In 2022, Linh returned home after 6 years abroad. Back in Angola, he brought 6 bags of rice seeds from Vietnam to plant experimentally.  

After a period of fertilization, the team harvested Angola’s first wet rice crop in April 2024.  “From now on, people have rice!” he shouted with joy on the day of the harvest. 

Following his initial success, Linh invested more in wasteland to plant various crops, hire labor, import lawnmowers from Vietnam, build livestock farms, and cultivate crops. It is also said that some Vietnamese agricultural specialists traveled to Africa to assist the team with farming methods.

Thus far, the farm has generated income for numerous indigenous people by producing a wide range of agricultural goods, including corn, sugarcane, vegetables, cattle, poultry, and aquatic products. To make ends meet and stabilize their lives, the group also helps individuals sell their agricultural produce in the market. 

“In the past, we used to eat corn and cassava. Linh arrived and filled the arid village with an abundance of Vietnamese fruits. The village now has very beautiful houses and plenty of food,” Matiloi said in gratefulness.

With videos about African life, Linh’s YouTube channel currently has more than four million subscribers. He declared that the community in Angola and Vietnam would be served by the income from channels and businesses that support the community.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, Linh and his team made several trips back to Vietnam, where they took part in a series of charity projects aimed at improving the lives of those living in underprivileged areas. 

In recognition of the work of Linh and his team, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairwoman of the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Le Thi Thu Hang welcomed them in Hanoi on June 3, 2024, on their return to Vietnam for charity.

She said that Linh and his team’s efforts in Angola have helped to project a positive and endearing image of Vietnam and its people throughout Africa.

One of the outstanding activities in Africa that Linh presented during the meeting with the Deputy Minister is the process of helping the Angolan people grow wet rice and harvest the first crop. 

“Linh’s humanitarian efforts and activities in Angola tell moving human stories that evoke strong feelings and impressions in viewers, motivating many Vietnamese, particularly the younger generation. By creating a link between the people of Vietnam and Angola and Africa at large, Linh has also helped to bring distant Africa closer to the Vietnamese people,” said Hang. 

In the coming time, Linh promised to share more farming knowledge with Angolan farmers and encourage rice cultivation. The ultimate goal is to establish the biggest farm in the area, produce a wide range of goods, raise sheep and goats, and develop a sustainable farming model on the underutilized land.