By Mary Kasoka Mwiikisa
On a hot sunny afternoon, we take a drive to Chongwe’s Kanakantapa area, a resettlement agricultural scheme established in the 1990s. This was in response to the country’s economic crisis then, which resulted from plummeting copper prices on the international market.
Situated 55 kilometres from Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, Kanakantapa is home to the majority of small scale farmers whose produce is mainly sold to consumers in Lusaka’s central business district.
On this trip, our first stop is at the farm of Mwansa Mwila and his wife, Nyuma Nyirongo. The Mwilas are a young vibrant couple, grounded in horticultural production.
At a glance, we are met by a refreshing greenery of their maize crop field. At a time when most farmers in Zambia are grappling with a major drought, a “green” and well-watered crop is a fulfilling sight.
“The drought has affected us and the only solution is for us to rely on irrigation,” says Mr. Mwila. “I mostly use drip irrigation but in other cases, I resort to furrow and flood irrigation. However, due to the long hours of power rationing, the irrigation frequency has reduced.”
Mr Mwila’s wife, Nyuma, is an Agroecologist. She enjoys being self-employed at their farm due to her passion for agriculture.
“We have been married for four years and farming has been rewarding. Apart from doing it for our livelihood, we use the time we spend together on the farm to bond,” she beams.
During a guided tour of the farm, Mr Mwila talks about the HEALTHY FOODS AFRICA- HFA, a HIVOS project aimed at empowering smallholder farmers with the right tools for a sustainable and resilient agricultural system.
He attributes the success of his recent crop yield to the HIVOS training.
“Before the training, I made terrible losses especially during harvest time. Much of the crop would go to waste due to the poor pre and post-harvest dynamics. This project exposed us to information on produce preservation, food processing and market linkages, a component which is crucial for our production. We also learnt about how best to preserve the produce in a way that prevents chemical residues on the produce,” explains Mr Mwila.
He also talks about how the training was timely especially for the drought season, emphasising how lessons on organic and sustainable farming practices such as mulching and composting, have helped in the increase of the soil’s organic matter and the preservation of its moisture content to support crop resilience during drought.
“It’s a pity that the project is coming to an end,” he laments. “My family is eternally grateful for the knowledge acquired through the training. However, this project should have covered a larger catchment area of Kanakantapa and Chongwe so that more farmers especially the youth can learn the best practices of sustainable agriculture.
With the support of this project, we as a community formed a multi-purpose cooperative to strengthen our collective action, but this will no longer be as effective , as we will no longer have access to the expertise of the HFA due to its closeout.”
The Mwilas grow among other vegetables, cabbages, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cucumbers, chillies and okra. They also have a chicken run of layers which is inactive due to financial constraints.
They have since called on Government through the Ministry of Agriculture, to help smallholder farmers who are passionate about agriculture acquire credit from financial institutions as most banks require collateral.
They also appeal to HIVOS to continue holding the farmers’ hands after training, until such a time that the trained farmers can also train fellow farmers.
One-hour drive from the Mwilas farm, we arrive at Lydia Mtonga’s farm. A former Banker by profession, Lydia is a warm and cheerful lady, more motherly than you can imagine. She immediately offers us food and drinks upon our arrival and is quick to point out that the food cooked is all organic.
“My late husband and I started this farm way back, but we started farming consistently in 2016,” she recalls. “The death of my husband is a huge blow on the farm activities as we used to work together. Now, I have to do everything by myself, of course I have some help but it’s not the same without him.”
Lydia, a fruit farmer, takes us on the tour of her farm. She has also grown a small portion of vegetables, beans and chillies but complains about the destruction caused by stray goats and cattle from the surrounding community.
“I have applied for the Consistency Development Fund from the government, if this works out, I will buy a game wire to protect the farm from these animals, and part of the money will help me invest in drip irrigation which is not labour intensive. At the moment, I just irrigate my plants using hand held pipes and it is tasking,” she notes.
Lydia continues, “I really don’t know how to thank HIVOS for the training because before the training, most of my fruits would go to waste as they would ripen at almost at the same time. Now I know how to dry some of the fruits, how to process my oranges into fruit juice and how to process mangos and tomatoes into paste. These methods are important to my success as a farmer.”
As one of the beneficiaries of the HFA project, Lydia says learning about the importance of avoiding burning when preparing land for cultivation, saying crop residues from the previous harvest can be used to make compost manure and improve organic matter for the soil. As an ardent advocate for organic foods, Lydia says the project should have ensured a sustainable way of continuity.
“I have learnt many lessons from this project, and I wish HIVOS could empower all of us who benefited from this training to train our fellow farmers in the community for the knowledge to be transferred far and wide,” notes Lydia.
After a heavy and delicious “organic” meal, it is time to leave for Lusaka. We hesitantly say our goodbyes to Lydia as she gives us fruits and plants as gifts.
Back in the noisy city, we head to one of the densely populated townships of Lusaka. A glaring contrast of our previous location, the Kanakantapa farms.
Driving through the heavy noisy traffic of vehicles, hawkers and pedestrians, we finally secure a parking space just across Mtendere Big Market. Mtendere which means “Peace” is far from its meaning, it’s streets are noisy and buzzling with heavy traffic of pedestrians and motorists alike,one has to double-check where they’re going least one falls into a drainage.
We walk into the market area and meet Thandiwe Chakufyali. She runs a small restaurant in the market area. Thandiwe tells us to make ourselves comfortable as she prepares for the interview.
Her restaurant is clean despite having limited space for her customers. Most of her clients are fellow marketeers who sell various products within the market.
“I have been running this restaurant for over four years and business has relatively been okay,” she says. “This year, however has been difficult as many marketeers would rather save than buy food from my restaurant because their sales too have gone down. We have over 10 hours of load shedding; this means cooked food could easily go bad, my refrigerator is mostly off.”
Thandiwe says the training she underwent from HIVOS is paying off now more than ever.
“Can you imagine if I didn’t have the knowledge on food preservation, what I now do is if I buy vegetables in bulk, or any food and it’s not ordered for cooking by my customers, I have the fish or chicken smoked or dried, and I dry the vegetables too. I don’t cook large quantities of food, to prevent wastage,” she shares.
Among the lessons she talks about is financial literacy. Thandiwe discloses that on a good day, she makes on average 600-800 Zambian Kwacha (about 32 USD). Unlike before, she adds, “I am now able to understand the expenditure and the profit side of my business.”
A few metres away from Thandiwe’s restaurant is Alice Muleya. Alice, a vegetable trader at Mtendere big market, has been in this business since 1990.
A seasoned trader, Alice welcomes us to the somewhat quiet part of the big market, a shelter where you can buy any dry and fresh food, from dry fish and dry beans to fresh and dry vegetables.
“I have been in this market for over 30 years and I have seen it all. One thing I learnt recently was the food processing and preservation techniques from HIVOS. I used to avoid buying vegetables when they were in season because everyone would be selling them, hence the high chances of wastage. But after the training from HIVOS, I am now able to take advantage of the low prices of some in-season vegetables, like tomatoes currently. I don’t worry about wasting because I can easily process the remainder into paste or simply dry them,” she confidently explains.
Alice however says the training from HIVOS would be more effective if she and her fellow group members such as Thandiwe were empowered with food processing machinery.
Speaking at the end of the tour, Vuyo Maphango, Project Officer, under the Healthy Food Africa (HFA) Project at Hivos Southern Africa, sums up as follows:
“We are satisfied that the training offered is being put to good use. On this project, we worked with the excluded groups in the agricultural value chain. We focused on the Chongwe Food Systems Lab in Kanakantapa and the Lusaka Food Lab in Lusaka.”
Mr Maphango says the aim of the project was to promote sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems in Chongwe and Lusaka. The project’s efforts focused on, among others, agroecology, here looking at increasing organic matter in the soils, reducing pesticide use and loss and food waste, and financial inclusion. He adds that the project also focused on empowering the farmers and traders on how to tap into government resources such as the Constituency Development Fund- CDF in Oder to upscale their businesses.
Mr Maphango has called on policy makers and other relevant stakeholders to consider interventions that focus on irrigation for the small and viable farmers.
It is estimated that total post-harvest losses in sub- Saharan Africa amounts to one-third of total food production in volume, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In Zambia, high post-harvest losses range from 30-40% due to poor storage and handling given limited access to related technology, tools, and infrastructure. Further, the informal food sector which encompasses marketeers supplies food to approximately 80% of Lusaka’s population. Therefore, projects such the Healthy Foods Africa initiative must be acknowledged for the difference being made in the food value chain in Zambia.