Online Reporter
George Maponga
Masvingo Bureau
Masvingo farmers produced a record over 10 000 tonnes of sesame in the just-ended farming season as the province continues to consolidate its foothold as a major producer of the crop that is boosting household incomes of rural communities in arid districts such as Mwenezi and Chivi.
The record sesame crop by Masvingo farmers accounts for 40 percent of the total sesame produced in Zimbabwe in the just-ended 2024/25 farming season.
Rural farmers from Chivi and Mwenezi are expanding sesame production in response to the setting up of a sesame processing plant, which is part of the fledgling Rutenga Industrial Park in Mwenezi.
More than 25 000 rural farmers in Mwenezi and Chivi are now full-time sesame producers with assistance from a local non-governmental organisation, Sustainable Agriculture Technology and the Japanese government, where the sesame is exported.
Masvingo Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Ezra Chadzamira on Thursday handed over sheds and storage facilities to sesame farmers at the Rutenga Industrial Park in Mwenezi.
The facilities were built by SAT and the Japanese government and provide secure storage facilities for sesame farmers across Mwenezi as production of the crop continues to be scaled up.
In his address at the handover, Minister Chadzamira hailed the growing position of Mwenezi as a major sesame producer, noting that increased production of the crop was a boon for Vision 2030 targets.
He said sesame production was stimulating rural industrialisation in Mwenezi, which also dovetails with the province’s vision to morph into a US$8 billion economy by 2030.
“We want to applaud the investment by SAT in partnership with the Japanese Government to build sheds and storage facilities for the sesame crop produced by our farmers,” he said. “These facilities will enable our farmers to deliver more produce for export to Japan, thereby boosting disposable incomes for our farmers across Mwenezi, which speaks to Vision 2030 of making Zimbabwe an upper-middle-income society by 2030.”
Minister Chadzamira underscored the importance of public-private partnership to engender socio-economic development, saying Mwenezi was experiencing rural industrialisation due to investment in value addition of agricultural produce such as sesame and paprika.
Besides boosting incomes for rural farmers, sesame value addition at Rutenga has also created direct jobs, thereby stemming the tide of unemployment.
The Masvingo Provincial Affairs Minister noted that the opening of the sesame storage facility would help nip in the bud the smuggling of sesame by unscrupulous traders into neighbouring Mozambique through the porous border between the two countries.
These traders, Minister Chadzamira lamented, were reaping off farmers, a situation he said would now be ameliorated now that there were no sesame storage facilities at Rutenga.
Rutenga is slowly gaining traction as an emerging industrial hub in southern Masvingo, with sesame being an anchor crop for a fast-growing agri-processing industry at the fledgling growth point.
