agricultural value chains sector

So you may have asked yourself, "What EXACTLY is Arthur doing in Zambia?" GREAT QUESTION. I will be joining the Agricultural Value Chains sector team in southern Africa.

Agricultural Value Chains takes a relatively new approach to international development. In traditional agric development projects, specific livelihood constraints are directly addressed (e.g. farmers dont have access to fertilizer, NGO helps them gain access to fertilizer). Agricultural Value Chains on the other hand, takes a more systemic view at development problems. The farmer's constraints are no longer isolated. The entire value chain is examined all the way from the producer to the consumer. The cause may be rooted in the complex web of, or lack thereof, relations between the small-scale farmers, the government, consumers, govenrment, rules and regulations, and social norms. Using a market facilitation approach, the value chains for high-value cash crops are mapped out and relationships are built with the intention of making small-scale farmers active, entrepreneurial market participants. The overall goal it provide the farmers the ability to leverage their small-scale agricultural operations as means of wealth creation.

What EWB's job is to assist local NGO's/partners, who are taking a Value Chains approach, to develop greater capacity in doing what they do. Currently the constraints that exist include:

• gaps in field staff capacity (i.e. ability to train farmers)


• monitoring and evaluation systems for implementation (i.e. ability to detect and evaluate market fluctuations)


• managerial and organizational capacity

As Overseas Volunteer Staff, our jobs are to work together with these various levels by helping to develop and implement tools to increase the partner organizations capacity to be market facilitators. I will be paired up with an organization called International Development Enterprises (IDE) (http://www.ideorg.org/) for the first 3 months in order to gain some field-level experience to truly get a better understanding of farmer livelihoods. IDE enforces and compliments the Value Chains approach by idenfitying high value crops and helping small-holder farmers become effective market participants in their respective value-chains. To compliment this approach, IDE also seeks to increase farmer labour productivity through providing responsible access to low-cost irrigation technologies (i.e. treadle pump).

I will (most likely) be working at the IDE field-office located in a small town called Pemba (just south of Lusaka and north of Livingstone).

I know that may have sounded a little buzz wordy. But that's what I'll be doing in a high level perspective. Once I arrive in Zambia.