Chronicle Editor
Sikhulekelani Moyo, Business Reporter
MATABELELAND North Province is scaling up its food security and nutrition enhancement programmes through production partnerships between local communities, the Government and development partners.
The projects under this programme are focused on developing water resources for domestic and livestock consumption, as well as small-holder communal irrigation.
Speaking during the official launch of the Amalima Loko Programme in Gwelutshena area, Nkayi District on Thursday, Minister of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development, Dr Sithembiso Nyoni, said the five-year programme aims to improve food and nutrition security through increased food access and sustainable watershed management in Matabeleland North and other parts of the country.
She said such capacity building programmes were critical in transforming livelihoods and that these also feed into the country’s National Development Strategy (NDS1).
“Amalima Loko Programme is feeding into NDS1, which is a national blue-print developed by the Government of Zimbabwe to guide all the development players,” said Dr Nyoni.
“To date, a lot of activities have been done by the Amalima Loko team in collaboration with the Government and stakeholders in Nkayi District.
“Amalima Loko is operating in five districts of Matabeleland North and Lupane is one of them. This is a five-year USAID funded programme, which aims to improve food and nutritional security through increased food access and sustainable watershed management.”
The programme was initially conceived in October 2020 and with focus on rehabilitating community assets like boreholes and dip tanks, supporting grazing land improvements, promoting crop and horticulture production as well as livestock management.
This buttresses NDS1, which seeks to improve food self-sufficiency in the country and ensuring that Zimbabwe restores its regional bread-basket status.
The main objective is to increase food self-sufficiency from 45 percent to 100 percent and reduce food insecurity from the peak of 59 percent in 2020 to less than 10 percent by 2025.
Matabeleland North is one of the provinces susceptible to prolonged dry spells, which leave communities with no grazing land and lack of food for people resulting in loss of livestock and malnutrition to children under the age of five.
Dr Nyoni, who is also Nkayi North legislature, applauded the Amalima Loko model and their working relationship with the Government and other stakeholders.
“Amalima Loko work very closely with villagers and Government programmes. They train youths to engage in different development programmes, which will help as they will continue to work even after this programme,” said the minister.
Nkayi Rural District Council chairman, Mr James Mnethwa, said the projects being implemented by Amalima Loko have great impact to human and animal survival in the province.
“I am confident that by the end of this Amalima five-year programme, communities, wards and the province at large will be left with a great tangible improvement following the pace at which the team is moving,” he said.
“They have already rehabilitated boreholes and dip tanks and we also have functioning gardens, which are providing people with vegetables and fruits through borehole irrigations.”
The Amalima Loko initiative also trains communities to value-add their products including vegetable, fruit and grain dryings, which allow them to sell these to other people or to be used during off seasons.
The programme also trains people to prepare stock feed using available products like pods and leaves harvested from the available bush trees and plants.
Amalima Loko chief of party, Mr David Brigham, said the first year of the programme is dedicated to learning and ‘community visioning’.
“We have started our projects in full speed now, which include borehole and dip tank rehabilitation, irrigation projects and gully reclamation, agriculture training for the preparation of the coming planting season in cooperation with Agritex and nutrition trainings with community health workers,” he said.
— @SikhulekelaniM1
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