Changing weather patterns as a result of climate change have led to villagers in Rushinga district, one of the driest and rainfall-shy areas in the north-western corner of Zimbabwe, about 200kilometres outside Harare, thinking outside the box to find survival skills and ensure food security.
Changes in climate have resulted in less rainfall and more arid environments for agricultural production, which has shifted Zimbabwe's five main agro-ecological zones.
But through support from the Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development in Southern Africa (CCARDESA), the villagers in Rushinga have come together and formed a Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) project which is now ensuring they have food on their tables, and send their children to school with money raised from selling the produce.
So successful has been the project that the Rushinga Rural District Council has embraced the Kushinga Holdings climate-proofed project, describing it as “a wholesome package”. The project is made up of mostly women as statistics indicate that at the household level, they are the most affected by climate change and the changes in weather patterns. The project has 120 direct beneficiaries and these have been assisted to register a company while a local bank is providing financial literacy so that they are able to invest their funds wisely.
Using a drip irrigation system which draws water from boreholes drilled in the area, the project produces cabbages, tomatoes, sugar beans, leaf vegetables and fruits such as papayas which are sold in neighbouring communities and further afield in Harare. Two fishing ponds, each populated with 4 000 tilapia fingerlings, have been constructed. Some moringa trees have also been planted in the spaces between the cabbages as their leaves help to fertilize the soil while the roots absorb nitrogen for the brassicas. Moringa leaves are also consumed by people for their many medicinal and nutritional properties.
CCARDESA, with funding from the Intra-African Caribbean and Pacific Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+) programme which seeks to strengthen the capacity of Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States to undertake regional and national adaptation and mitigation actions in response to the challenges caused by the effects of climate change, stepped in to support the CSA project in Zimbabwe.
Similar projects have been implemented in Eswatini, Mozambique, and Zambia. The European Union has contributed €8 million to the GCCA+ programme to increase the capabilities of SADC Member States to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, and to have their voices better heard in the international climate change negotiations.
In an interview, Rushinga Rural District Administrator, Ms Loretta Dube, said the CSA project is a welcome development which will go a long way in improving the livelihoods of villagers in the area which is generally dry and lacks water for households and livestock use.
She said the drip irrigation system is not labour intensive and easier for the women to use when they tend to the vegetable garden and fruit trees orchard. Ms Dube was impressed by the training that project beneficiaries were undergoing in vegetable production and propagation of trees, and urged them to learn and muster the skills so that they would use them to further sustain themselves.
The secretary of the Rushinga CSA project, Mr Chriswell Kamugogode, said the project is changing the livelihoods of the people who were now able to continue sending their children to school through proceeds from selling their produce. Some members of the community were indirectly employed to provide labour to the project, thereby getting income for their families. He called for more education and information about CSA among communities in the area so that there is buy-in from the people.
Mr Kuda Manyanga, the chief executive officer of Grow A Tree Foundation, a CCARDESA partner which is implementing the project, said their objective was to address climate change challenges that rural communities face.
“The principle behind our work is the assumption that there is no area as dry or as marginalised such that it has no potential, there are things or resources that are within those environments that we can work on with members of the communities to enhance their resilience to climate change impacts," said Manyanga.
CCARDESA programmes co-ordinator, Mr Bartholomew Chataika said in response to the effects of climate change, their mandate was to restore food and nutritional security in the communities.
“This project came about in response to the issues of climate change. We wanted to bring solutions to the communities to respond, adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. We concentrated on capacitating the communities to start producing high-value and nutritious fruits and vegetables. By doing that we supported the community through European Union funding to construct climate smart facilities.”
Ms Dube, Mr Kamugogode, Mr Manyanga and Mr Chataika were speaking on the sidelines of a visit to the project by extension officers and climate agriculture experts who were in Zimbabwe attending a week-long regional training of trainers’ (TOT) workshop to build capacity on CSA technologies that CCARDESA has been promoting in the SADC Region in collaboration with its partners.
The (TOT) workshop was held in Harare from 20th to 24th March 2023 and attended by participants from Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as representatives from the GCCA+, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and Accelerating Impacts of Research Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) implementing countries.
The overall objective of the workshop was to train trainers on CSA and tools that have been developed by CCARDESA and its partners to ensure mainstreaming to other SADC Member States to enhance more effective contributions towards resilient food systems in Southern Africa. The trainers were expected to disseminate the knowledge learnt to the farmers on the ground.
