Washington Chinamhora looked frantic, dropped sweat but could still afford to smile as he led a delegation of the minister of State for Mashonaland East Provincial Affairs Apollonia Munzverengwi, Higher Lifer Foundation officials and villagers to his award-winning agriculture plots at a field day in Kopje, Wedza under Chief Svosve.
The 38-year-old Chinamhora was voted the top male farmer in ward two of Wedza District as judged based on his exceptional performance across his three mid-season conservation agriculture plots which were sponsored by the Higher Life Foundation for the 2022 and 2023 cropping season.
The project was initiated by Reimagine Rural Africa, a department under Higher Life Foundation. Launched in early 2019 by the Strive Masiyiwa family, it aims to foster economic activity at the rural level with a special focus on women and youth and promoting shared prosperity in rural Zimbabwe while meeting the needs of vulnerable populations and reducing inequalities to improve livelihoods.
“I thank Higher life foundation for uplifting us as farmers, since they came on board, I have been receiving bumper harvests as compared to previous seasons,” said Chinamhora.
“We have managed to get surplus that we have been selling to fend for my family and to take my kids to school.
“I have been growing maize, groundnuts and beans from the inputs and technical support I received from Higher Life Foundation and Reimagine Rural Fund.
“Higher Life should keep on helping farmers like they are doing so that we help our families and community and also to bring back our country to its bread basket position,” added Chinamhora.
Reimagine Rural Africa general manager, Barbara Chivandire said small-scale farmers must be developed into green entrepreneurs.
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“We are very excited with the works we are doing since 2021, after a pilot project in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic showed us that food security was going to be topical,” she said.
“In the last two years, we have supported more than 10 000 farmers and we have also supported all the children’s homes in the country, by support we mean training and inputs.
The programme has been highly received and it’s the small scale farmers who put in so much hard work and are willing to learn new skills and it's high time we develop them to become green entrepreneurs that carry the country’s food security,” she said.
Chivandire revealed that they have so far used US$7 million since the inception of the project.
“We have partnered with Agritex officers and in each ward we have community based agriculture trainers, whom we identified from influential farmers taken for further training so that they can pass the knowledge to their peers, that’s a network of champions on the ground that reinforce the training,” she said.
“So far, we have spent no less than US$7 Million that we have used on inputs procurement, training and the extension services.
“We are in three districts so far and in our five-year plan we want to expand our network and move into other provinces, we are also in Matabeleland where we have piloted in Esigodini and Lupane.”
