By Vincent Gunde
An international non-profit social enterprise, One Acre Fund, will implement tree program in Dowa district supporting District Development Program (DDP) objective of reducing environmental degradation through the replanting of trees.
One Acre Fund started in Western Kenya in 2006 with 38 farm families, now serving more than 1,2 million families in Sub-Saharan countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi.
The organization supply smallholder farmers with high quality agricultural inputs on credit alongside training to help smallholder farmers grow their way out of hunger and providing key tools and services that aim at supporting farmers to grow their way out of hunger and building lasting pathways to prosperity.
Presenting the program to the District executive committee (Dec) in Dowa, One Acre Fund’s Public Relations Officer Thandiwe Ngwira, said Malawi is losing an average of 36,000 hectares of forest land each year due to increasing demand for socio-economic services from trees.
Ngwira said the program will be implemented using four main programs such as input loan program, the tree program, commercialization and rural retail with a goal of researching on new program opportunities that increases farmer impact and support rural economic growth.
She said on long-term goal, the program will provide additional impact that will support poverty reduction among rural households by adding new business interventions such as high value timber species trees or other products in the next 10 years.
The officer said on short-term goal, the program will distribute over 50 million high quality tree seedlings to cover 2 million farmers across Malawi with a 65 percent survival rate saying One Acre Fund conducted scouting survey on availability of land, land tenure security, willingness of local farmers, community based afforestation, soil suitability and water availability, among others.
“Species selection criteria was based on specie suitable in the district, primary use to the farmer and additional impact the tree can bring to the farmer or program,” said Ngwira.
She said among the implementation activities for the program will include nursery management identification, construction of nurseries, materials and seed distribution, farmer registration and training and tree seedlings distribution.
In his remarks, Dowa District Council’s Acting Chief Planning Officer Yusuf Laki, lamented that the district has for long been planting trees but the survival rate is very worrisome expressing hope that One Acre Fund in their program will look into that seriously.
Laki advised new partners for the district to sign Memorandum of Understandings with the council and the Civil Society Organizations Network for the district to enhance cooperation, transparency and accountability and providing to the council progress reports of their projects.
