Dec 28, 2015 | News

NEPAD’s PAF Programme - Lending support to the effective management of Zambia’s vital water resource

Zambia’s Barotse Flood Plain in the western region of the country holds about 40 per cent of the water resource in the southern African region. Over 2 million people depend directly on this resource, hence the need to effectively manage the social-economic aspects of the large water expanse.

A recent meeting on Aquatic Agricultural Systems in Africa (AAS), in the Zambian Capital Lusaka, emerged with significant outcomes including a pledge to the Country to diversify rain-fed agriculture systems by making more and better use of the water resources by producing more food, including crops, livestock and fisheries integrated aquatic-agriculture farming systems.

Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) are farming and fishing systems where the annual production dynamics of natural freshwater and coastal ecosystems contribute significantly to the household livelihood, including income and food security.

The meeting, officiated by Zambia’s Agriculture and Livestock, Mr Bob Sichinga aimed to clarify where and how aquatic agricultural systems can best contribute to  the objectives of CAADP and other regional initiatives, as well as identify where the AAS program should focus attention in 2014-2017.

imageMr Sichinga stated that through NEPAD’s CAADP support Zambia had held a strategic business meeting in May, to solicit support from partners for its National Agriculture Investment Plan.

Under the AAS, WorldFish Centre, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) which is responsible for fisheries research aims to maximize the food and livelihood benefits of fishing and farming communities. In order to ensure coherence with the African rural development priorities, the CGIAR and WorldFish, are working to align the AAS with NEPAD’s agriculture, fisheries and rural development agenda. This partnership will be through NEPAD’s development blue-print Programmes- Rural Futures, Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) and Partnership for African Fisheries (PAF).

Representatives of Ministries of Fisheries, Agriculture, and Environment from a number of Africa countries; the private sector; non-governmental organisations, Academia, as well as farmers and  traditional leaders held consultations on the various experiences, achievements and challenges.

Mrs Estherine Lisinge-Fotabong, Director of NEPAD’s Programme Implementation and Coordination stated that the Rural Futures, one of the NEPAD’s new programmes, had similarities with the AAS.  The Rural Futures Programme aims to accelerate rural transformation by designing economic policies and programmes to develop and uplift the quality and standard of living of Africa’s rural population.  

image“The objectives of the Rural Futures may not be efficiently achieved in some of the African countries without integrating fishing, aquaculture, fish processing and fish trading,” said Mrs Fotabong. 

At the meeting, the WorldFish committed to work with the NEPAD Agency to design the next set of AAS hubs which will be used to demonstrate the Rural Futures principle. One of these principles will be to show that sources of livelihood for rural people comes from both agriculture and non-agriculture activities. Some of these sites will be aligned with the on-going support to countries which are implementing fisheries reforms, such as Benin. 

Sessions were interactive and provide participants the opportunity to listen to the people living in the Barsotse areas and how their lives are affected.

“The AAS programme has helped the communities in the Barotse Flood plain to improve their capacity to articulate their development needs and communicate these to the policy-makers; more importantly, we have been able to develop strategies to deal with those affected by flooding”, said Induna Imandi, the representative of the Barotse Royal Establishment.

The stakeholders agreed that the AAS should assist African countries to design programmes for rural transformation which are able to generate real change using the fish and water as key drivers of productivity.