National Farmers Organisations

This publication is a report of the outcomes of the workshop convened by His Excellency, Lt. General Dr. Seretse Khama Ian Khama, President of Botswana and Chairperson of SADC in May 2016 on Food Security and Poverty Eradication to exchange ideas on how to address several food and nutrition security challenges in Southern Africa.

Namibia is one of the countries mostly vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change which may affect our national development goals, particularly the agricultural sector, including food security. The Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF) is implementing a five-year project entitled “Scaling up community resilience to climate variability and climate change in Northern Namibia, with a special focus on women and children” (SCORE Project) with funding resources from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The project aims to strengthen the adaptive capacity of 4000 households to climate change and reduce their vulnerability to droughts and floods, with 80% of these households being women-led, and children from 75 schools in Northern Namibia. The project’s desired outcomes include: (1) Smallholder adaptive capacity for climate resilient agricultural practices strengthened; (2) Reduce vulnerability to droughts and floods; and (3) Mainstreaming climate change into national agricultural strategy/sectoral policy, including budgetary adjustments for replication and scaling up.

An advert to engage a wheat consultant in southern Africa

This document is a National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) for Namibia. It presents information about the main expected impacts of climate change and, those most vulnerable to climate change. The document also proposes objectives that the Government of Namibia will aim to achieve through an effective and efficient response to climate change. This policy was developed based on information obtained from prior climate change related studies that were undertaken for the First Namibia National Communication (FNC) to UNFCCC as well as that used to prepare the Namibia’s Second National Communication (SNC) and the assessment of financial and economic flows. Lastly but not least, input from various stakeholders have been incorporated.

Namibia, being a semi-arid country could potentially increase food security at a household level through conservation agriculture. Hence, there is a need for mind shifting among subsistence farmers from conventional farming to Climate Smart Agricultural (CSA) practices such as CA. Climate Smart Agriculture entails technologies aiming at transforming and reorienting agricultural systems into a sustainable agricultural efficiency in support of food security under climate change mitigating interventions. CSA is not only about new farming technologies, but a combination of traditional indigenous knowledge with common agricultural practices and appropriate agricultural technological developments. In addition, CA tend to be successful when combined with other climate smart strategies such as the use of drought tolerant and short maturing crops varieties. The Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF) of the Republic of Namibia strives towards attaining food security at both household and national levels through the deployment of efficient and sustainable food production practices. For this reason, MAWF had launched a Comprehensive Conservation Agriculture Programme for Namibia (2015-2019) in an attempt to educate and support subsistence crop farmers on new farming interventions aiming at addressing problems of food insecurity and mitigating the effects of climate change.

This resource is a regional report giving a general status of how agricultural information is being communicated in the region. It synthesizes reports which were developed by 12 SADC member states. The status is an attempt to inform development initiatives which are meant to support agricultural information communication and knowledge management in the region.

In Lesotho, FAO is distributing a series of illustrated guides, in English and Sesotho, to encourage and facilitate the construction of homestead gardens. The gardens are easily built using locally available material and are specially designed to improve soil fertility and capture moisture. With minimum maintenance, they can provide vegetables all year round.

This resource is a request for proposals to carry out an external audit for CCARDESA secretariat for the period of three years starting from 2017.

This is a story of Patricia Dzimbiri a Malawian who was groomed by the Agricultural Productivity Program for Southern Africa (APPSA) project through participating in farmer field trials for conservation agriculture and maize/legume intercropping systems. She has grown into a lead farmer supporting conservation farming in her district.

This article is a success story in the production of groundnut seed in Zambia. When groundnut seed production was introduced in Minga area in Petauke district, it relieved farmers of the pressure of having to rely on cotton as the only valuable cash crop.
Unit Seed Company in partnership with small-scale farmers in Minga area engaged in seed production of groundnut. The farmers were provided with groundnut basic seed by Unit Seed Company and produced certified seed, which the company buys and then sells to prospective markets