15 March 2015, Durban – A 3-day meeting of management and experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s southern Africa subregion concluded with a call to prioritize broad based partnerships and build synergies to provide countries with effective and efficient support in the Agriculture sector.

In an annual event designed to provide a platform for discussion and exchange of information on good practices and general performance of the FAO programmes in the subregion, Mr David Phiri, FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa, reiterated the importance of teamwork.

“Achieving food and nutrition security in Southern Africa is a challenge far too great for any government or FAO to overcome alone. As well as the governments of developing and developed countries, the civil society, private sector, and international development agencies must be involved. Above all, the people themselves need to be empowered to manage their own development”.

Agriculture the mainstay, challenges many

Agriculture is the major employer and a core constituent of the economies of most countries in the subregion. Rural areas are typically fragile and support an agricultural based livelihood system for the majority of the nearly 270 million people that call Southern Africa home. The agricultural sector is denominated by crop production, although the share of livestock production and other agriculture-based livelihoods has been increasing.

There is wide variability in the development challenges facing the countries of the Subregion. Chronic and acute food insecurity remains a major risk for the dominant agriculture based livelihood systems. Southern Africa still faces enormous challenges in trying to transform and commercialize its largely small holder-based agricultural systems through accelerated integration into competitive markets in a rapidly globalizing world.

Building on what works

One of the highlights of the meeting was a field visit to Dube AgriZone - a business entity of the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government. The facility - strategically located 30km north of the important coastal city of Durban - currently incorporates 160 000 square meters of greenhouses, making it the largest climate-controlled growing area under glass in Africa. Agricultural production in the facility is focused on vegetables and flowers for both domestic and international markets.

“I could never have been able put up such a facility and produce at the current scale were it not for this innovative AgriZone,” said Derrick Baird owner of Qutom Farms that currently produces 150 000 cucumbers in the glass greenhouse leased from Dube AgriZone. “This high tech facility with all the necessary facilities – including transportation and freight – has allowed us to concentrate on producing cucumbers at much lower costs than in other locations where we had previously tried”.

The partnership that exists between the Provincial Government and the private sector in this facility was hailed as an example of a success story that could indeed offer valuable lessons to others across southern Africa.

“There is plenty we can learn from this facility and perhaps one of the more important ones is on forming partnerships and alliances. We need to build on what is working by adopting and adapting technologies to the local situation, and then scaling them upwards and outwards to achieve even better results”, said Mr. Tobias Takavarasha – FAO Representative in South Africa and chairperson for the meeting.

The FAO Southern Africa Subregion comprises of 16 countries - Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Eritrea, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The meeting that was also attended by experts from FAO headquarters in Rome and the Organization’s Regional Office for Africa in Accra was held from 10 to 12 March in Durban, South Africa.

Contact:

Edward Ogolla | Communication Officer | FAO Subregional Office for Southern Africa | Harare, Zimbabwe | Email: [email protected]

Steve Lazaro | Communication | FAO South Africa | Email: [email protected]