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NewsDay

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Empowerment: A way out of the aid trap?

Opinion & Analysis
“Empowerment” featured rather prominently in the 2013 harmonised general elections.

“Empowerment” featured rather prominently in the 2013 harmonised general elections. The direction that Zanu PF is taking may be in evolution, becoming clearer with time.

Painona with Tapiwa Nyandoro

According to the Solidarity Peace Trust, Zanu-PF’s empowerment policy informed voters that supporting Zanu PF was “the single most important criterion for access to State-mediated economic opportunities”.

Post-elections, while the “understanding” may have lured votes by the hundreds of thousands, it now needs clarification and a reality check.

Handouts, equity takeovers, non-payment of utility bills and taxes, rates and non-servicing of (forced) bank loans, though attractive to beneficiaries, are not a sustainable option for empowerment. The target vote market for empowerment before elections was the Zimbabwean youth, demographics dictating the choice.

Perhaps, in the evolving approach, the State should target a more matured group: young to middle-aged parents or unemployed school and college leavers above 25 years of age.

Nowadays, with technology and knowledge changing rapidly, re-skilling for different jobs or up-skilling and multi-skilling to increase productivity, whether self-employed or formally employed, is the in-thing; be it in Arkansas, US or Zaka, Zimbabwe.

Young to middle aged rural parents are the ones sitting on underutilised or idle assets in the form of land and livestock.

Themselves represent underutilised or underemployed labour.

In their book, The Aid Trap, authors Hubbard and Duggan put forth a radical solution for ending extreme poverty.

They believe that the current systems of developmental aid keep the poor poor and the only sustainable means of eliminating extreme poverty is a thriving business sector.

The government, therefore, should seek to unlock value in the rural economy.

Zanu-PF’s near-death experience in the 2008 elections could have been a good wake up call.

The once forgotten Nziramasanga Commission on Education Report seems to be taking centre stage, as both Empowerment minister Francis Nhema’s thrust on vocational training as the main route to empowerment and President Robert Mugabe’s explanation of the role of the Ministry of Psychomotor Activities in vocational education, suggest.

Reading NewsDay’s recent harrowing accounts of food insecurity in the drier low veld regions of Zimbabwe, such as Buhera and Chivi, the so-called Aid Trap syndrome become apparent.

A substantial portion of the population goes hungry together with their livestock, reluctant to convert the livestock into cash strategically and on time.

If they could be taught to commercialise their herds, the situation could be different.

Adequate skills could see calving increased to at least once a year for over 80% of the eligible cows and proper drought-resistant fodder grown to feed their beef and dairy herds as opposed to using a maize crop that would have failed to reach maturity because of drought, as NewsDay recently reported.

Similarly, with the right skills and information/knowledge, as Nhema emphasised, more efficient breeds could be selected and developed for the fodder crop, beef herds and dairy cows.

Of course, commercialised small scale chicken farming and small livestock breeding can be added to the mix.

Communal farmers own over two million of the national cattle herd, worth over a billion dollars.

Getting them to see the herd as a tradable good from which they can derive a sustainable livelihood, rather than only as an insurance against catastrophic events could be a major breakthrough in national economic activity.

Communal farmers, one or two per village, should be recipients of the first scholarships, grants or loans to mature entry agricultural colleges for certificates in beef cattle husbandry or dairy farming.

The opportunity would then be taken to change their mindset from subsistence farming to small entrepreneurial activities involving full capacity utilisation of both physical and biological assets at hand.

It is always a tragedy to see a struggling family underfeeding itself while its livestock starve to death due to droughts.

That is unnecessary capital destruction.

Professor Scoones, a leading British Agriculture ecologist, recently pointed to “hidden” or underutilised biological assets in combating the ravages of drought in Zimbabwe.

As he noted: “Livestock was precisely the asset in the drier parts that is used in times of drought to exchange for grain and distressed sales (of the livestock) are common and important for food security”. This is an important observation, as it is the “distressed sales” that should be minimised and avoided.

They should be replaced with planned, managed sales that maximise returns on investment.

Mature entry agriculture colleges should impart this know-how and strategic thinking to their asset-laden, but reluctant or fear-constrained would-be entrepreneurs.

In addition to the above, the application of communication technology and new ideas is another empowerment tool.

The Ecocash and EcoCashSave products will do wonders for rural productivity, while an enlightened rural folk are more likely to be receptive to Tawanda Nyambirai’s “cattle paper” project.

Last, but by no means least, land titling is a game-changing complimentary empowerment initiative which could unlock a further $10 billion or more in the rural economy.

Attractive though the concept of mature entry vocational training is, the sad truth in Zimbabwe is that the government does not have enough resources for its current commitments.

The challenge is to initiate a government roll-back programme to create the fiscal space needed to fund the production-oriented empowerment initiative that, once up and running, should be self-funding.

Critically too, are good international relationships to woo aid and foreign direct investment in support of the programme for socio-economic change.