Solar-powered irrigation schemes
DROPPING out of school at a tender age has not extinguished Rosemary Nkala’s dream to send her children to school and one day buy a car. The 35-year-old Nkala believes that through hard work her, destiny is still within her own hands.
She is now a mother of four, the eldest in Form 5, and the second in Form 4 while her last born twins are in Form 1 at Selonga High School in Gwanda South.
Nkala, a Form 2 drop-out, said she was no longer struggling to send her children to school, courtesy of a solar-powered irrigation scheme supported by Practical Action, a nongovernmental organisation supporting agro-ecological farming in the arid region.
Her husband is not formally employed and the family now depends on the Phakamani solar-powered garden in Selonga, funded by the Swedish government with Practical Action as the implementing partner.
“I used to struggle to send my children to school, but all that is over,” Nkala boasted.
“We are 46 in this garden project and since Practical Action drilled a borehole and installed this solarpowered drip irrigation system, our yields have improved and so have our sales.
“Life has changed.”
She added: “We used to do the laborious manual watering of the garden, but the drip irrigation has made life easy for us.
“It was no joke carrying water from the canal with buckets to water the garden.
“It was the most difficult and painful thing we endured since the garden was set up in 2012 by Care International.
“But when Practical Action came to revive it in 2017, our lives have changed.”
Nkala said Practical Action did not only provide the irrigation system, but also conducted several field schools to educate the smallholder farmers running the various solar gardens in Gwanda South.
“I am the production secretary for the Phakamani solar garden and we have been taught to manage our project professionally” Nkala said.
“Others do marketing, accounts and so forth.
“We have been taught how to conduct professional gardening. Government-employed agriculture extension workers are also supporting us.”
The excited Nkala said they no longer have to sell their livestock to send their children to school.
“Schools have been closed and are due to open soon, but I don’t have any headaches, I have the money to pay for the fees.
“I also don’t have difficulties in providing food for my family,” she said.
“We have fresh vegetables here and we buy mealie-meal and other goods from the money we realise from the garden.
“We have food and it’s good for our health. During this Covid-19 lockdown, from my small portion, I managed to personally raise R7 000.”
She added: “In three to five years, I want you to come back here and see a car that I will have bought.
“I have always had a dream to own a car and with this project, my dream will come true.”
“Dropping from school in Form 2 will not stop me from dreaming of owning a car; money comes from the soil and with the gift of water we got from Practical Action, I will buy it.
“I have a lifeline and I will see all my children through college.
“I have already established a goat project out of this garden.”
Nkala’s story resonated with those told by several other villagers in Gwanda South, who have benefited from solar-powered gardens funded by Practical Action.
Gwanda South lies in the country’s lowland area, up to 900 metres above sea level, and falls into ecological region 5 characterised by poorly distributed rainfall.
The district is also dominated by Kalahari sands with poor water-holding capacity.
The soil type has low plant nutritional levels and hardly sustains crop life without augmentation from either chemical or organic fertilisers.
Due to poor rainfall, high temperatures and poor soil type, the district is always food-insecure with limited alternative livelihood opportunities for communities.
But non-governmental organisations such as Practical Action have been helping smallholder farmers to adopt various in-situ water harvesting techniques in the form of mulching and pit planting to address the effects of climate change.
Practical Action, under the theme “Enhanced Agricultural Productivity and Resilience to Climate Change through Solar-Powered Irrigation”, has assisted several communities in Gwanda South’s wards 1, 2, 3, 5, 14, 15 and 18 by setting up four irrigation schemes and 15 solarpowered gardens funded to the tune of $2,3 million, which have helped transform lives.
In the past, the irrigation schemes and gardens have been supported by dam water, and could not run all year round due to dwindling water levels in the reservoirs, high cost of diesel to pump water as well as obsolete infrastructure, disrupting farming activities in the gardens.
But with the drilling of boreholes and solar-supported drip irrigation by Practical Action, smallholder farmers have been enabled to produce throughout the year.
Drip irrigation also requires less labour, apart from increased production.
Practical Action has been implementing its project in Gwanda under the Resilience Enhanced through Agriculture Productivity (REAP) programme, funded by the embassy of Sweden in Zimbabwe through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to the tune of US$2,3 million.
REAP was running parallel to Renewable Energy Empowering Women Farmers Project (REEWF), funded by the Isle of Man government to the tune of £1 527 for implementation in Gwanda South and Matobo.
Fambidzanai Permaculture Centre is the implementing partner for the REEWF projects where smallholder farmers are required to contribute about 10% of the total cost of the project in both the Gwanda and Matobo projects.
To date the projects have facilitated improved access to water through support in the drilling