on the move to southern province

In-country training has ended and it's time for me to start my placement and move out of Lusaka. For the next three months, I'll be in a small town called Pemba, approximately 3 hours car/bus ride south of Lusaka on the way to Livingstone.

Pemba is a small town with a population of approximately 4000 in the Choma District of the Southern Province of Zambia. Amongst its 4000 inhabitants, approximately 90% are farming households that live in villages, some of which are over an hour drive away from the main road.

In terms of living and accomodations, I decided to continue to push myself outside of my comfort zone by living in a small village for the next three months with a family. I will be commuting from the village to the field office (along the main
road) every morning.

For work, I will be partnered for 3 months with the Pemba field office of IDE (International Development Enterprises).
IDE is an international NGO that aims to increase the income of smallholder farmers across the world via supply chain creation and mangaement of low-cost irrigation technologies and value chain implementation to ensure relationships and players across the chain are well-functioning to serve smallholders (e.g. accessible output markets and support services). IDE is currently in its 3rd of 4 years in the RPI Project (Rural Prosperity Initiative) through funding primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The RPI project focuses on 6 components:

• micro-irrigation technology (i.e. treadle pumps and low-drip systems)+ supply chain management
• farmer capacity building in horticulture production (e.g. demonstration plots)
• connecting farmers to agricultural inputs (e.g. fertilizers, seeds, etc..)
• connecting farmers to financing, primarily micro-credit
• marketing: linking farmers to output markets
• gender relations workshops

Each field office, has a only a handful of field staff (ranges from 1 to 3). Each field office has to tackle approximately 5000 farmers and focus on all 6 areas of focus. The insufficient amount and satifactory quality of resources (field staff numbers, capacity, time, contradicting priorities and money) brings about challenges for IDE-Zambia to fulfill their goals.

Production numbers are up in Pemba. IDE has successfully helped farmers in the area increase their production yields of vegetables; however, the main crux of the problem in Pemba remains this: 90% of the population are small holderfarmers and are all producing, thus creating a surplus in supply; but there is a lack of demand and market opportunities for these farmers to sell their produce resulting in extremely low prices. The lack of focus on marketing by the IDE-Zambia head office and IDE International has created a mismatch between realities in the field and program focus. Here is where EWB comes in.

Thuslasy B., my coach and EWB AVC staff, has been working with the IDE-Zambia and all of its field offices over the past year to develop and improve field staff capacity to perform market facilitation (What does it mean to be an effective Market
Facilitator?). I will be using the next 3 months to complement Thulasy's national-level work at one field office by

• continuing to monitor field staff capacity (work already done by EWB) and effectiveness to facilitate quality market linkages, and to
• improve quality of service provided to farmers with respect to production and output marketing. This may include setting up a monitoring and evaluation system for farmer demonstration plots. The next three months may also include helping to strengthen the depth of discussion and the effectiveness of communication, progress-monitoring, and decision making /implementation procedure within existing farmer market committees.

But primarily, I am paired up IDE for 3 months (instead of 1 year) in order to LEARN LEARN LEARN about field level realities of field offices and farmer livelihoods in rural areas. This will prep first-year staff members, like myself, with on-the-ground knowledge before moving up to do more high-level development work. Come January, I will be placed with a head office of another organization (NGO or private sector), most likely back in Lusaka, to work more with management level capacity building projects and initiatives.

So my dear family and friends, starting this Monday I will have very limited and infrequent internet access. If you need to contact me, please give me a call on my cell phone.