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(View also the accompanying video in link on right hand side) |
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The Lozi people of Western Zambia use the silemba (xylophone) as an instrument not just of entertainment, but of celebration as well.
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There might not seem to be anything extraordinary about an apple – until you witness how income from growing the fruit can help lift people out of poverty.
In 2006 Self Help Africa brought root stock for 3,800 apple trees from Spain and distributed them to farm producers in upland project areas of two existing area-based projects in the Oromia region of Ethiopia.
More than 40 individual and community nurseries grafted the fruit, while lead farmers in project areas were provided with technical training and assistance to pilot apple production on their farms.
Since then several hundred households in the area have planted apple trees, while efforts are underway at a wider level to secure new markets for the product, particularly in the markets and tourism businesses of the capital, Addis Ababa.
A father of eight children, Abara Gashawe is one of more than 60 farmers in the Huruta area who has been rearing apple trees.
The young trees have yet to reach maturity, but Abara is optimistic that within the next year or so he will be collecting a valuable bounty from his small orchard.
Kebebusa Meresha from Wolmera Choke village in Holleta District shares this optimism and says that the 105 apple growers in her region have already been organized into a fruit producers co-operative as they prepare to sell and distribute their produce.
A mother of two, Kebebusa says that she has already been selling the fruit that she harvests from her 32 apple trees in local markets, but that when the co-operative begins marketing on their behalf, they will be able to sell to fruit markets and other institutions in the city.
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As mothers of young families, Edith Nakiyemba and Mirabu Mokoda say that a few years ago it would have been ‘unthinkable’ for them to be able to borrow money to start their own businesses.
But as founder members of the Bamukiisa savings and credit co-operative (SACCO) established by Self Help Africa in Namwendwa district in Uganda three years ago, the window of opportunity was opened for both of them.
32-year old Edith, a mother of seven, established a small enterprise buying and selling agricultural produce, before using the profits to purchase a second-hand sewing machine and renting a small premises in which to set up a local tailoring business.
“I do alternations for people and also make dresses and suits for people for special occasions,” she says. Edith has used the revenue she has generated from her dress making to diversify her income even further too and after initially purchasing three female goats she has built her herd up to six in the past year.
She is a member of a small women’s development group in the village and is involved in efforts to set up a parish-based savings and credit co-op for Bamukiisa.
Mirabu Mokoda used her first loan from the village SACCO to develop a small retail trading post in Bugobi and returned to the co-op for further loan support when she decided to trade agricultural inputs and produce in her business, alongside household goods.
A mother of six young children, Mirabu says that until the SACCO was created she would have had no chance of borrowing money for any purpose at all. “I had nothing that I could offer as security against a loan, but now I have a business, and have also started my own herd of goats,” she says. The creation by Self Help Africa of a micro-finance programme had allowed dozens of women in Bugobi to get their feet onto the ladder and move beyond subsistence, she says.
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A forestry regeneration project being undertaken in Northern Malawi is a testimony to the benefits to be gained when communities are supported to work together to a common goal. |
Copyright © Ammado AG, 2012
