More than 200.000 rural households in Zambia are set to benefit from a new seven-year project partly financed by a loan from the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) aimed at helping smallholders grow more crops by combating disease in their cattle and opening up more land for cultivation.
The total project cost of 15 million US dollar will be partly financed by a 10,1 million dollar loan from IFAD under an agreement signed Tuesday at the Funds headquarters in Rome by its President Lennart Båge and Zambias Ambassador to Italy, Lucy Mungoma Mungoma.
– Most of Zambias smallholders (småbønder) depend on animal power for ploughing their land. Repeated outbreaks of Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (lungesygdom) and East Coast Fever have killed a large proportion of smallholders cattle and forced many people to resort to the hand hoe (hakke), says Ides de Willebois, IFADs regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa.
– The project will drive the two main cattle-killing diseases back to manageable levels. In areas where disease prevalence rates have been reduced to manageable levels, communities who have lost most of their cattle will receive cattle for onward distribution of offspring, enabling a major expansion of the area under plough, and improved food security and income, he noted.
As well as receiving livestock if they have lost cattle to disease, poor farming families will also receive training on combating such diseases and a specialized unit will be set up within the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives to implement control measures, IFAD said.
Since it started operations in 1978, IFAD – a specialized UN agency dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries – has provided loans totalling 135 million dollar to help finance 10 programmes and projects in Zambia.
Zambia er programsamarbejdsland for Danida i den danske bistand.
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