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Zimbabwe demonstrated a scalable innovative food system policy through its 1-hectare irrigation model during a plenary session on the official opening yesterday of the Africa Food Systems Forum running from 2 to 6 September 2024 in Kigali, Rwanda.
Addressing participants during a room discussion on scalable innovative food systems policies and the financing needed to support Africa’s food systems transformation yesterday, Dr. Anxious Masuka, the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Development said climate-proofing agriculture is at the core of the ministry’s strategy to develop this sector.
“Climate-proofing agriculture is at the core of our strategy. Our planning unit effect is a household. So when you plan to climate-proof agriculture at the household level, how do we in the rural villages, make my mother an investment case as a household? And how do you make the village an investment case? And we developed a model now that we call the village business unit. They are centered around water.
“So women and girls don’t have to journey 7km or 8km to the nearest river to look for water, especially in a dry year like this. But they have safe, clean water and within 30 minutes of fetching, so they can do other things. But that water becomes an economic enabler, because around that, we put solar panels, we put all solar power, we put a borehole,” Dr. Masuka said.
He said water is not only a constitutional right but also an economic enabler. The Zimbabwe government is going to drill 35,000 boreholes in 35,000 villages.
“And daily in this 1 ha, solar-powered, solar-enabled drip irrigated garden, our people can start working safely in a village. As they do so, they earn the National Employment Council (NEC) stipulated agricultural wages every month at the end of the crop cycle. If it is horticulture, in 90 days, it becomes shareholders, dividing dividends. But we had lots of civil actors investing with different motives. And all we did was bring them to the table and say, this is the alignment that we wish to have, let’s be consistent.
“So we have 1 ha throughout every village. When they were doing 2 ha, they are now able to do two villages. So that’s the alignment we’ve been able to do. We’ve also now moved into doing resuscitation of irrigation schemes. The resuscitation of old, dilapidated irrigation schemes on 26,000 ha in Zimbabwe was largely the preserve of development partners in civil society who saw this impact at the rural level. But we went in as a government and said, how do we partner? This is the government’s Vision 2030. How do we ensure that this communal irrigation scheme becomes viable, sustainable, becomes profitable?”
Minister Masuka said the irrigation schemes are addressing the challenge of rural-urban migration
In the past, there were challenges in bigger irrigation schemes in terms of control and streamlining of agricultural activities
“So if you’re relatively sick and you choose not to plough, but the water is moving, electricity is moving, needs to be paid, the other gets old and says, no, I no longer want to do an annual crop, I want to do a perennial crop so I would add mangoes, mango trees in my crops. The other does maize, the other does paprika. The water use efficiencies are different, and all these are expected to contribute.
“So we aligned all the actors and said what do we want out of these irrigation schemes? How do they contribute to our vision? We looked at the skill failures then we go back every four to five years to rehabilitate them simply because the people have no skills. They don’t see this as a business. First, let’s talk about the weight on the land. So if it is 80 families on 40 ha now it’s a block of 40 ha irrigable land and we deploy a skill manager who becomes a business manager. We established a company called X Irrigation Skill Business Unit. In the past, they would not do it because their mango trees would take four or five years to mature. Now, they get involved in agriculture daily across the value chain,” Minister Masuka added.