Boosting agriculture productivity with radio listening clubs

Florence Mzyeche

By DOREEN NAWA

FLORENCE Mzyeche is an inspiration to many women in her home village of Mphande, in Petauke because of her involvement in the radio listening clubs.

“It is difficult to make a living through farming in Petauke just like in many rural areas in the country,” she says.

But with Ms Mzyeche’s guidance, many women’s groups have found a way to cope with drought and high food prices by using new methods of farming.

 “How is it that I didn’t learn about this in time? If we had applied the new farming techniques that I have learnt through the radio listening clubs, I’m sure I wouldn’t be here telling you about my misadventures. What I mean to say is all the efforts that my family put forward three years ago failed,” says Ms Mzyeche.

“I am certainly not the only one to complain about the lack of knowledge concerning new farming techniques. The experience I had on my field three years ago might not be different from that of my neighbour. For me, the redeemer now is the Radio Listening Club where we meet and learn and share experiences on how best we can improve our yields,” Ms Mzyeche added.

While many rural farmers have limited access to information, radio reaches at least 70 percent of rural households countrywide.

Because small-scale farmers are often located in hard-to-reach rural areas, it is believed that radio is a cost-effective tool for reaching them.

For many rural Zambians, radio is a key channel of information. For small-scale farmers who have limited or no access to other media such as newspapers, television, or the Internet, radio is an essential part of their daily lives.

Mphande Villagers listening to a radio programme

In 2007, Panos Southern Africa (PSAf), a non-profit making organisation, established to stimulate public debate around development issues in Zambia and other countries in Southern Africa by providing relevant information, combined with other information and communication technologies (ICT), to fight poverty and food insecurity.

“We work in partnership with community radio stations in various districts, like in Petauke, we work with Petauke Explorer to increase the reach of agricultural information, enhance farmers’ participation and give farming families a voice.

Mr Elias Mthoniswa Banda, PSAf regional manager for media development and ICTs says, “Through our work, we have found that radio is the preferred source of not only agricultural information for the large majority of smallholder farmers but any information to the rural populace.”

Radio is a suitable and cost-effective tool for the dissemination of agriculture information because the data, which is usually transmitted in local languages, can be assimilated by those without formal education.

“Most importantly, radio, particularly when coupled with other ICT, such as mobile phones, can give voice to end-users through participatory radio programmes. Radio is an effective tool helping farmers to make informed decisions and supporting the adoption of innovative agricultural practices,” said Mr Banda.

Petauke Explorer station manager Patrick Phiri says as a result of their educational efforts, farmers have learnt conventional farming methods and are willing to invest in the correct application of fertilizers.

“They also know how to plant in rows with the right spacing, and the best ways to manage their farms. We can also see that post-harvest handling practices have also improved. Many farmers are testifying that they no longer store grain on the floor, but on raised platforms and this is as a result of the exchange of information through radio listening clubs,” Mr Phiri said.

Similarly, NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) the continental framework for transforming agriculture in Africa, places a high premium on the role of radio to reach farmers. 

CAADP is the African Union-NEPAD long-term framework to improve food security, nutrition, and increase incomes in Africa’s largely farming based economies.

Women of Mphande Village gather to share information after a radio programme

Acknowledging the fact that radio has a powerful role in distributing information on African agriculture, there is need for commitment to disseminate pertinent information to local communities by linking policy makers and researchers with farmers on the ground.

For the illiterate rural populace in particular, occasions for information exchange are usually during community festivals, family gatherings, traditional and religious associations, interaction with itinerant merchants and encounters at marketplaces or water wells.

However, these communities, women especially, are making use of radio listening clubs to ensure their own as well as their families' survival and. These clubs have created an environment of information exchange in rural communities.

The people in the countryside are also able to use radio listening clubs for leisure through the cultural, knowledge, customs exchange.

Women are usually active participants in the social communication networks. They use indigenous communication methods for information exchange, knowledge sharing and the dissemination of strategies for mutual assistance and survival.

It is the wish of the country as well as the continent to end hunger and reduce poverty by increasing agricultural productivity.

In June 2014 at the African Union summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, African leaders voiced their commitment to prioritising agriculture in national development plans, ending hunger and cutting poverty in half by 2025.

In fact, ending hunger remains at the forefront of long-term global political priorities.

Ending hunger and cutting poverty especially in rural area is possible through innovation and information sharing, one of which is through the use of radio. (Story published on Oct 25, 2014 in the Zambia Daily Mail).

Life around Garden sewer ponds

WOULD you eat vegetables that came from gardens surrounding sewerage ponds? The imagery isn’t appealing.
Despite knowing that the water from sewerage ponds, once treated, may be cleaner than what comes out of most faucets, many people are disgusted by the idea.
But in places like Lusaka’s Garden and Kaunda Square townships, vegetables grown from sewerage ponds using the untreated water are being sold.
As population growth strains land availability in Lusaka, the protected area around sewerage ponds in Garden township has been turned into residential plots and vegetable gardens.
According to international guidelines, any human activities should take place 500 metres away from the ponds. But for the Garden sewer pond in Lusaka, the situation is different; the activities such as housing, gardening and car washing are taking place within the 500 metres range.
Mubanga Chewe, 25, a resident of Garden township, makes a living through selling vegetables grown from his gardens surrounding the Garden Sewerage ponds in Lusaka just less than 100 metres away.
“I came from Ndola because I needed to do something that could put food on my table. I have a cousin here in Garden and when I came to Lusaka, I managed to buy seedlings and started a small vegetable garden around the ponds. I use the money I get from the sale of vegetables, to contribute towards the upkeep at my cousin’s home and buying certain basic necessities that I need,” Mr Chewe says.
“I also use the money to buy washing detergents for the car wash that we co-founded with Mulenga Chama, a colleague of mine,” Mr Chewe added.
But besides being beneficial to Mr Chewe, the area surrounding the ponds has been taken for plots and is home to hundreds of families who have built houses within the 500 metres range surrounding the sewerage ponds in Garden Township. But surprisingly, these people have become used to the odour coming from the ponds.
“The odour from the sewerage ponds has become normal because we have had it throughout our stay here,” says Christina Kabaso, 50, a resident of Lusaka’s Garden township.
She says she remembers passing through the ponds over twenty years ago and there were no signs of the surrounding area developing into residential plots.
“I used to pass through the ponds and this land where we are was plain but little did I know that I would live this close to these ponds. My niece bought this house two years ago,” Ms Kabaso said.
“We are not here illegally; we have genuine papers from the local authority. We have no problems staying here but the only challenge is the stench, we are to blame for coming this close - it’s all because of insufficient land in Lusaka. I wish the Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company can fence the ponds so that people do not drown,” Ms Kabaso added.
But Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company public relations manager Topsy Sikalinda says the utility company has no intentions of fencing the sewerage ponds because of budgetary challenges.
“Our priority this year is not to fence the sewerage ponds, this year we are connecting people to clean piped water,” Mr Sikalinda said.
But simply put, staying closer to the sewerage ponds, which were established in 1962, is a serious health hazard.
Public health specialist Canisius Banda says wastewater in sewerage ponds carry many disease-causing organisms
Dr Banda says bacteria, viruses, and parasites (including worms and protozoa), are the types of pathogens in wastewater that are hazardous to humans.
“Fungi that can cause skin, eye, and respiratory infections also grow in sewerage and sewerage sludge. Scientists believe there may be hundreds of disease-causing organisms present in sewage and wastewater that have yet to be identified,” Dr Banda added.
According to Dr Banda, bacteria are microscopic organisms responsible for several wastewater-related diseases, including typhoid, paratyphoid, bacillary dysentery, gastroenteritis, and cholera.
“Many of these illnesses have similar symptoms, which vary in severity. Most infect the stomach and intestinal tract and can cause symptoms like headache, diarrhoea (sometimes with blood), abdominal cramps, fever, nausea, and vomiting. Depending on the bacteria involved, symptoms can begin hours to several days after ingestion,” Dr Banda said.
Dr Banda, who is also United Party for National Development (UPND) Vice-president for politics, says the death of Zambian local authority systems and its repercussions for town planning pose a challenge for planners.
“The implemented reforms have incapacitated local government as an agency for town planning, entangling the profession. The challenge for the planners now is how to avoid or stop implementation of policies that negatively affect the profession and the people at large. For the Zambian case, the system has already collapsed and the question is on how to increase efficiency in the town planning agencies and restore public confidence,” Dr Banda says.
“As local government has collapsed, should it be resuscitated – how far can planners influence its resuscitation having failed to stop it from collapsing – or should new agencies be established?” he added.
But just how did the residential area surrounding the sewerage ponds come about?
According to the Lusaka City Council, Garden township is one of the several examples of unplanned settlements.
LCC public relations manager Mulunda Habeenzu says the residential area in question was due to an illegal settlement.
“I don’t think the local authority and the ministry of lands can overlook the international guidelines for sewerage ponds which indicate that any human development should take place over 500 metres away from the ponds. The people living closer to the sewerage ponds started as illegal settlers. The major problem here is political cadres and their councillors who from time immemorial have been distributing land or plots without consulting us or the ministry,” Mr Habeenzu says.
Townships by their unplanned nature pose a lot of challenges for service delivery. They generally lack proper infrastructure like roads and the houses are not accurately numbered, thereby inhibiting effective delivery of basic services like water and roads.
Evidenced from Garden township, people build at will, without putting into consideration the basic necessities that will qualify a place as a residential area.

Recent expansion of Africa’s agricultural trade bodes well for food security, resilience

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia—Africa’s share of world agricultural trade has increased in recent years after decades of decline, and trade among African countries has been on the rise. Both trends have boosted Africans’ ability to access food and distribute it to the neediest during hard times, according to a report released today at the annual Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The conference, which focuses on this finding and others from the 2013 Africa-wide Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR), is organized by the African Union Commission (AUC), in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Conference delegates will discuss the importance of improved agricultural trade performance and competitiveness to enhancing the resilience of the poor and vulnerable. They will review the latest evidence tracking Africa’s agricultural progress against key Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) indicators. They will also discuss countries’ progress toward evidence-based policy planning and implementation through the establishment and operation of Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support Systems (SAKSS) platforms and the strengthening of mutual accountability through regular and comprehensive agriculture joint sector reviews.

The report found that Africa’s agricultural exports accounted for 3.3 percent of world agricultural trade in 2009-2013, up from 1.2 percent in 1996-2000. While still small, the jump represents a threefold increase. Moreover, Africa’s agricultural exports have quadrupled in value terms and doubled in caloric terms. And the share of intra-African trade has doubled: nearly 34 percent of agricultural exports originating from African countries now go to other African countries.

The findings are significant because agricultural trade in general, and intra-African trade, in particular, can be a critical element to ensuring that the poor and vulnerable are able to remain resilient in the face of economic shocks and severe weather events.

“While the situation is far different from that of the 1960s, when African countries dominated global markets, the recent performance indicates that Africa can become a major player again,” said Ousmane Badiane, Director for Africa at IFPRI. ”Now countries need to sustain the policies and institutional reforms and scale up the investments that made this change possible.”

The report attributed Africa’s growing share of world agricultural exports to improvements in trade infrastructure, such as telecommunications, success in integrating global and regional markets through preferential trade agreements, improved economic growth, and an increase in world prices of some raw materials.

It also found that diversity of crops had helped boost trade. At the end of the 1990s, the top 10 agricultural exports made up 51 percent of Africa’s total agricultural exports. Since then, African agricultural exports have become more diversified and more competitive, so that by 2010, the top 10 agricultural exports accounted for 40 percent of total exports.

Fueled by both economic growth and population growth, agricultural imports have risen considerably faster than exports. As a result, the agricultural trade deficit rose from less than US$1 billion to nearly $40 billion. This highlights the tremendous challenge facing African countries and the need to deepen the reforms and scale up the efforts that have accelerated exports over the last 10 years.

“The renewed commitment in Malabo by African heads of state and government to redouble efforts to boost competitiveness and trade, in global as well as intra-African markets, could not have come at a better time,” said Abebe H. Gabriel, director of the Rural Economy and Agriculture Department at the AUC. “It is a step in the right direction.”

The report’s findings show that African countries have become more competitive in regional markets and that faster growth of demand in these markets has also contributed positively to trade performance by African countries. The findings also show that decreasing barriers to regional trade would further boost the recent growth of intra-African trade and allow countries to take advantage of the stabilizing effects that often accompany expanded regional trade. Domestic food markets can be stabilized by expanding regional trade to buffer shocks to individual countries. Regional trade can help mitigate the effects of weather shocks in any one country. The report shows that about 40 percent of the time over the last 30 years (four out of every ten years), the impact of losses in maize production due to drought might have been mitigated by trade.

Trade policies should be aimed at reducing transport and other transaction costs and increasing agricultural productivity to improve the livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable and enhance their resilience to shocks. For instance, the report notes that, in the case of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) countries, reducing overall trading costs by 10 percent would raise regional cereals exports by about 20 percent on average over the next 15 years. The impact would be at least 2.5 times that much in the case of major staples such as roots and tubers. Raising yields by the same magnitude would have an even bigger impact on regional exports, with increases of at least 30-40 percent across nearly all commodities. Specifically, the report recommends that governments should:

Expand markets with better transport infrastructure to make it easier to move crops from surplus to deficit zones;

Invest in science and technology to raise agricultural productivity and enhance the capacity of domestic agricultural sectors to supply local markets and adjust to shocks;

Eliminate nontariff cross-border barriers to foster market integration at the domestic, regional, and international levels; and

Invest in social safety net programs and adopt more conducive policies to mitigate the potential destabilizing effects of trade while maximizing its positive short- and long-term benefits for growth and food security.

COMESA to hold first Regional Agriculture Investment Forum

COMESA will hold an inaugural Regional Agriculture Investment Forum aimed at promoting agriculture investment in region from 13-15th October 2014 in Livingstone, Zambia.
The Regional Agriculture investment forum provides a platform for private-public sector engagement for investment in agriculture along the value chain within the context of continental CAADP agenda.
Speaking during the COMESA-Africa Lead Joint Planning meeting for the Investment Forum, COMESA Deputy CAADP Coordinator Dr. Meebelo Nalishebo said the main objective of the investment forum is to link priority investment areas in agriculture in the COMESA region, with potential investment.
“While all member states will be invited, the primary focus will be for member states that have developed their National Agriculture Investment Plans (NAIPs) for implementation. Countries that are advancing in the CAADP process will be able to use the Investment Forum as an opportunity to learn lessons from existing NAIP presentations. This will assist in advancing their own processes”, Dr. Nalishebo said.
And Africa Lead has expressed keen interest to partner with COMESA to ensure the first COMESA Regional Agriculture Investment Forum is a success. Dr. Meebelo said this partnership will also have a component for capacity building for member states for resources mobilization particularly on how to come up with bankable investment plans and project proposals.
Speaking during the meeting, Africa Lead Senior Organizational Change and Institutional Development Specialist Dr. Paul Thangatha disclosed that his organization was ready to partner with COMESA to ensure a fruitful event.
Dr. Thangatha added that the COMESA Regional Agriculture Investment Forum provides an opportunity for COMESA to look at what has come out of the recent Africa- United States Summit and to focus on strategic areas for investment in regional value chains.
Speaking earlier during the welcoming remarks, COMESA Investment Promotions and Private Sector Division Senior Agriculture Expert Salim Shamseldin said investment promotion was one of the key elements of  CAADP.