Zim, Namibia join hands in fight against poverty
Namibia and Zimbabwe enjoy cordial relations etched in history and in common future aspirations. The two are bound to work together whenever duty calls as seen by Namibia’s delegation which was recently in the country for a working visit facilitated by the World Food Programme (WFP) Windhoek and Harare offices.In addition, liaison ministries in the two countries also supported the visit.
NAMIBIA’s mission to Zimbabwe was led by its permanent secretary Mr I-Ben Nashandi from the Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, which until 2015 fell under Labour.
Mr Nashandi and his Zimbabwean counterpart, Labour and Social Welfare permanent secretary Ngoni Masoka re-affirmed commitment to south-south cooperation, at least from a social protection front as the two exchanged notes on systems in place to assist vulnerable groups of society.
For the larger part, the engagements sought to grasp systems to handle food assistance provisions to beneficiaries.
The Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare is currently partnering with the WFP in implementing the SCOPE system for social protection programmes.
SCOPE is a “cloud-based digital solution that helps WFP to know better the people it serves by providing a more personalised and helpful assistance”.
SCOPE is WFP’s corporate beneficiary and transfer management platform and is operational across 65 countries (46 countries in Africa) and 31 districts across Zimbabwe.
The system feeds into the efforts of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on Zero Hunger. The information of beneficiaries is at the core of the interventions as it provides a direct line of sight between the desired food security outcome and the beneficiaries.
SCOPE has both offline and online capabilities and beneficiaries are registered to this system using personal identities and biometric features where applicable which then constitute registration for this system.
Upon successful registration, each household is given a SCOPE card that comes with a pin code for beneficiaries to authenticate before receiving their entitlements and the system sends timeous feedback loops to WFP’s service delivery cycle.
This registration allows for entitlements which are setup and with beneficiaries enrolled into interventions, which can be at household or individual level.
Household members can be enrolled into different interventions at the same time using one SCOPE card.
SCOPE supports transfer modalities which include cash, value vouchers and commodity vouchers.
SCOPE aggregates interventions through a computed beneficiary system which uses contemporary technologies for more efficiency.
In 2016, Namibian President Hage Geingob launched the Food Bank Programme under the auspices of the Harambee Prosperity Plan (2016-2020), the country’s flagship development programme consisting of five pillars which are: Effective Governance, Economic Advancement, Social Protection, Infrastructure Development and International Relations and Cooperation.
A pilot programme is currently underway in the Khomas region, aiming at addressing urban and peri-urban poverty as part of efforts to ending hunger.
Zimbabwe’s interventions towards strengthening food security are largely concentrated on rural areas, which are more vulnerable, as evidenced by the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee over the years.
Mr Nashandi said this visit was timely, as Namibia sought to enhance a more efficient food distribution system.
“We are here to learn about some of the best practices,” he said. “As you might be aware one of the functions that we have as a Ministry is to establish a food bank programme towards the destitute.
“As part of enhancing the efficiency of this programme, we need to enhance our interventions and shift from manual systems to reduce duplication of functions.”
In Marange where WFP has contracted local retailers, the team got to see SCOPE as a transacting mechanism with household beneficiaries using SCOPE cards to access preferred basic food items for use at rural households.
These activities are handy as they come in during the peak hunger period (January-March).
Rushinga - A bastion of resilience
Located some 250 kilometres away from the capital, Harare and at the tip of Mashonaland Central Province and with similar conditions as Mt Darwin, Muzarabani and Mbire, Rushinga falls under natural farming regions four and five.
Characterised by low rainfall, frequent droughts and other shocks which contribute to food insecurity including low rainfall and armyworm, Rushinga continuously soldiers on as a bastion of resilience, like its name, despite endemic natural threats to livelihoods.
Manyeredzi and Katiri weir dams, located in wards seventeen and eight respectively, both falling under Chief Rusambo are centrepiece projects adaptive not only to climate change but matching to perennial conditions in the District.
As part of the Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) programme, the two dams were constructed by labour endowed but food insecure households.
These projects were borne out of local partnerships with the Community Technology Development Organisation (CTDO), a cooperating partner of WFP and relevant Government departments.
In 2015, 430 workers built the Manyeredzi weir dam, during the May-October periods to allow the community to work during the dry season.
The cooperating partner with support from WFP technical team define the bill of quantities for the project at design phase.
Afterwards inception workshops setting roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders are held leading into registration of partners into an online registry called SCOPE, which commences thereafter.
Necessary verifications are done to ensure that there are no inclusion and exclusion errors.
CTDO Engineer Namatirayi Cheure said: “If there are 500 people, there is registration in the community, with the village coming together and conducting a ranking of vulnerable households which are endowed with labour for take-off.”
After all due processes are followed, beneficiaries are handed SCOPE cards to access food payments for work done.
“If there are 500 people, there is a registration in the community, with the village coming together and conducting a ranking of vulnerable households which are endowed with labour for take off,” she said.
The construction work is done during the dry season, with communities working 15 days per month and four hours a day, from 8-12 in the morning.
For these efforts the community gets assistance of basic food commodities and in some other cases, cash. There is also inclusion of gender during the working shifts.
Before SCOPE manual systems were used and the process was quite tedious and having to be redone in the next cycles.
The important of FFA is that assets are handed over to communities as way of ensuring sustainability. This marks a departure from the dependency syndrome.
Community gardens have also been handy in alleviating poverty in the District.
Every dam is complemented by a one to two-hectare gardens. A classic example is the Katiri Irrigation Scheme benefiting 92 households cultivating 2 hectares, which are irrigated using solar energy.
The technology carries water through pipes which feed into troughs used as reservoirs to store water that is connected across plots each measuring 150 square metres.
This innovation has tended to reduce the workload which comes with fetching water for agricultural purposes, largely by women.
Mr Nashandi hailed the input of these projects in fighting poverty and ensuring food sustenance at community level.
“We are impressed by a project of this magnitude and other interventions you are doing downstream.
“If we feed ourselves we eradicate poverty in Africa.”
The weir dams and other infrastructures have changed the outlook of numerous wards in Rushinga District. Mr Nashandi said he was hopeful Namibia will replicate similar programmes.
Councillor for Rusambo (ward 17) Mrs Beauty Makanga welcomed the FFA project saying it had translated into better livelihoods for community members and livestock.
“When we heard about the dam project, we found this escarpment to be appropriate for such purposes” she said.
Previously, the community used to access water from Gulliver Dam nearly 20 km away (in ward 15 Manetsera) which is also used for Chimhanda Settlement Irrigation Scheme.
Besides the long distance away to the watering point livestock were at risk of being attacked by crocodiles at Liver Dam.
The visit to Zimbabwe thus depicted community involvement, household resilience and also mirrored the place of SCOPE in programming.
The cooperation between Namibia’s Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare and Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare will soon be cemented through a Memorandum of Understanding under the existing Namibia-Zimbabwe Joint Commission.
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