Drought: Zimbabwe needs new agro model
02/05/2012 00:00:00
by Tafirenyika Makunike
I HAVE the privilege of writing from Zimbabwe where I am spending a couple
of days. Once you have survived the Animal Farm chaos of entering the
country through BeitBridge, you can really have an exciting and memorable
visit.
If half our politicians just experienced a quarter of what the rest of us
have to endure just to get into the country through the BeitBridge border
post, then all the border issues would have been solved long time ago.
I have always wondered how many visitors just stay away from Zimbabwe
because they cannot endure BeitBridge border. It is in this vain that I
welcome a suggestion by Mthuli Ncube of the African Development Bank that
BeitBridge should be converted into one-stop border post.
The country is still pregnant with opportunities whose gestation period is
being lengthened by our collective hesitancy to bite the bullet and do what
needs to be done. The country is still largely a tale of two groups of
people – a large mass of “have-nots” at the bottom and the few privileged
haves perched at the top with a sprinkling of some “desire to have” in the
middle.
Those with the “desire to have” can transverse the divide between them and
the haves, once they identify and exploit a particular opportunity. If they
fail, then they slide down to the large pool of “have nots”.
The financial survival of most of the “have nots”, largely located in the
rural areas, is inextricably linked to the rainfall patterns of the area. I
went through my own village where I grew up and for probably the third year
in a row, they are going to harvest absolutely nothing again but not for
lack of trying though. They may even be the unintended victims of climate
change, a phenomenon they neither know about, nor did they participate in
causing.
Every year, they have dutifully put their seeds to the ground, weeded the
young crop, even applied fertiliser but while they were waiting for the
bumper harvest the rains disappeared. When you do the maths of all the
finances that these villagers put to the ground with no return, it is
absolutely devastating.
There is no human being anywhere in the world who is wired for handouts.
Receiving handouts year-in year-out does terrible things to their
self-esteem. Much of these rural villages enter that period which Charles
Mungoshi euphemistically called “waiting for the rain” prone to repeat the
same vicious cycle if the rain decides to show up in October, disappearing
in early January.
There is need for us as a country to develop a sustainable rural-based model
that would reduce the reliance on the pattern of rainfall. Unfortunately,
our politicians’ eyes are now firmly focussed on the next election which may
or may not happen in 2012 or 2013.
While I do believe in the value of democratic elections, I do not buy the
notion that it will answer all our socio-economic maladies. We need more
innovative national thinking that transcends short term elections focussed
on delivering a better life for those still trapped in the ‘have not’ cycle.
We now have a number of universities packed with the cream of our national
intelligentsia, but what we require from them is the conversion of
theoretical knowledge into applied knowledge for the upliftment of our
country.
I have had the benefit of doing some work in a number of agro-based regions
of South Africa and I have observed that much of their agriculture is not a
direct function of the rainfall pattern. It is more directly correlated to
the irrigation infrastructure. Building dams is indeed a good start but it
is not the end.
The village I come from has benefitted from a new dam build across the
Mpudzi River. Apart from the boon for those of us who enjoy bass fishing,
there is no harvesting of this water resource for cropping purposes
currently happening. Once a dam is built, there is need to deliver the water
affordably to the cropping fields.
If you are not in Nyanyadzi, Chakohwa or many areas of the Lowveld where
water can just be delivered to the fields through gravity, then you require
energy to deliver the water.
The Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project – long mooted – is not just a
romantic pipe dream but a sustainable agricultural model which could green a
large part of our dry lands resulting in improved livelihoods.
If we added an additional 3000MW of power generation capacity, our growing
economy could consume this added capacity in less than ten years. This
national planning requires futuristic thinking going beyond the horizon of
the next election.
Energy costs money which must be paid for in one way or another.
Unfortunately, when it comes to paying for energy, our political leaders are
terrible examples. The government is unable to provide the funds for the
huge infrastructural gap that exists in the agro-industries space. There is
need for massive incentives to entice the private sector to bring to invest
in this space.
Contrary to widely-held perceptions, rural people are quite amenable to
change once the benefits are clearly understood and explained. It is not
that the “have nots” are not willing to work for improving their lives. All
they require is guidance to move from just working hard to working smarter
and harder.
For sustainable livelihoods in rural areas, we need our intelligentsia to
assist in adoption of innovation from land preparation, planting of seeds,
crop care to harvest. There is ample opportunities for further innovation
from post-harvest handling, logistical arrangements for delivering the
harvest in time, right quality and price to the appropriate market.
We can excel as a nation in this field when we plan, allocate resources, and
act with the long term goal in mind.
Tafirenyika L. Makunike is the chairman and founder of Nepachem cc
(www.nepachem.co.za), an enterprise development and consulting company. He
writes in his personal capacity