Agricultural research strengthens food security in the SADC Region

CCARDESA has continued with its ICKM promotion tour in the region with Zambia adding up to the 6^th country. The main aim of the promotion is to create awareness about the CCARDESA website and the Southern Africa Agricultural Information Knowledge System.

 The Deputy Director of the Directorate of Research at the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Godfrey Mwila gave the opening remarks at the ICKM Promotion in Lusaka where he thanked CCARDESA for developing the knowledge hub and website with a deliberate intention of strengthening and sharing agriculture research to enhance food security.

 Mr Mwila mentioned that the ministry of agriculture produces several research papers which are not shared with wider audiences. He saw the SAAIKS knowledge hub and website as opportunities to strengthen the collaboration between Zambia and CCARDESA in this area. He appealed to the units responsible for research generation to take a step further and share the research that they have conducted as this was the only way people would be informed leading to change of utilisation of bad practices and adopting good agricultural evidence-based practices.

 Mrs Martha Chanda Munalula, the Senior Producer TV National Agricultural Information Services (NAIS) was excited with what CCARDESA does as it speaks to the NAIS’s passion for sharing agricultural research. She mentioned the need to deliberately develop local language programmes to meet the needs of farmers at the grassroots. She saw an opportunity in the CCARDESA website to develop country-specific radio programmes and videos for farmers to fill the existing information gap.

Ms Dorcas Kabuya,  NAIS information officer and the ICKM focal point person for Zambia, made a call to action to the workshop participants who were drawn from the media, regional NGOs, research organisations, the ministry of agriculture and academia to visit the website and share its content with the wider audiences.

Mr Fredrick Chomba, the APPSA monitoring and Evaluation who was representing the second focal point person for Zambia navigated the CCARDESA website, and participants were excited to see how well stocked the system was.

Generally,  the website was well received in Zambia and CCARDESA will continue to promote the SAAIKS and website in the remaining member states as it is a purveyor to strengthening the food security in the SADC region.