wfn.org | Zambia's story of gradual agricultural success

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

LWF: From subsidy to self sufficiency

CHIPATA, Zambia/GENEVA 5 March 1999 (lwi)  For 27 years, the people
of Zambia , under the one-party political system, received subsidies
from the government. This help sometimes included free supply of
food, housing, education, and health services. Life was relatively
easy, at least one could survive. Whether there was freedom of choice
or/and speech is a different issue altogether.

But the subsidized services created a dependency syndrome among the
people. They expected the government to provide food relief whenever
there were food shortages. In addition, individual farmers would
receive agricultural inputs on loan, but repayment was poor since no
penalty was exacted for failure to adhere to any credit conditions.
Eventually, many of the lending institutions became bankrupt and
ultimately closed.

In the mean time, the "giver" and "receiver" attitude became so
ingrained in the people, that to a great extent, they lost initiative
to plan for their own lives, work hard and live better.

It is against such a background that the Lutheran World Federation
(LWF) Rural Community Development and Motivation (RCDM) project
situated in Chipata, south-eastern Zambia, in addition to its
different development  activities in the health, agricultural,
environmental and educational sectors, started organizing people,
particularly the very poor, to form their own groups of 25 to 35 male
and female members. "Importance of loan repayment" was one of the
topics discussed in such groups. The LWF-RCDM trainers established
that whereas most of the group members and their family's livelihood
depended on agriculture, majority of them had no seeds. In 1994, the
RCDM project started to give seed loans to the groups. The group
executive committee would then distribute the seeds to the individual
members. Primarily, seeds of drought resistant crops were given out.

Although substantial information was shared about the importance of
loan repayment and despite written agreement between the recipients
and the RCDM project, only 17 percent of the seeds given out were
recovered after the harvest. This proved that the deep rooted
dependency syndrome among the people still persisted. A majority of
the groups did not believe that they would have to repay the loans.
Rather, they believed that the LWF being a church organization, would
apply "humanism" and write off the loans. Even the LWF project field
workers were not fully convinced that the loans would have to be
repaid.

However, efforts continued to educate the group members as well as
the field staff about credit projects. They were led to understand
that discipline must be exercised for a successful loan recovery
process in any credit program.

The following year, the LWF RCDM gave out 48 tons of beans, sorghum,
millet, cow peas, sunflower and early maturing maize to the groups,
with the condition that they would repay at 1:2 ratio after the
harvest. This meant that for every kilogram of seed received, they
would pay back 2 kilograms. That year's harvest recovered 73 tons,
representing 76 percent of the total expected.

^From the 61 tons of seeds distributed in 1996, the harvest brought
back 107 tons, translating into a recovery rate of 87 percent. What
this now means is that the LWF RCDM seed loan project is a viable
one.

At least by Zambian standards, it is not only the loan recovery rate
that has reached quite a satisfactory level but thousands of group
members also enjoy an improved standard of living thanks to the
project.

But the project is still faced with shortcomings: The seed
distribution and loan recovery process to and from the recipient
groups, which are scattered  over a wide geographical area in the
Eastern Province of Zambia is an extremely complicated exercise in
terms of logistics and staff time. The purity of the seeds is
gradually lost since what is recovered is of a lower quality than the
original, thus over time, all the seeds have to be replaced with new
ones, which is a costly undertaking, not to mention that carelessness
in preservation of recovered seeds results in huge losses as a result
of attacks from weevils, among other effects.

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Lutheran World Information
Assistant Editor, English: Pauline Mumia
E-mail: pmu@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/