Fighting poverty with heifers

from the East African

By EVE MASHOO

MIRIAM SABIKA, A mother of five, and who lives with her five grandchildren, has been a farmer in Kilowoza village, Mukono district in central Uganda over the past 20 years. Before 1998, Ms Sabika and her husband were peasant farmers struggling to eke out a living from their land.

Then they heard about Heifer International, a non-profit project that alleviates hunger and environmental degradation through gifts of food and income-producing animals and training. These animals provide a source of protein, such as eggs and milk for children and generate income for families through the sale of animal products. Since 1941 Heifer has helped over a million families in 125 countries become self reliant.

After a year’s training, the couple received a heifer. By selling the milk produced by the heifer, the Sabikas were able to look after their own children and their grandchildren.

The Heifer Project, which last month announced it had received a $42.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for its work in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, is an innovative way of helping communities lift themselves out of poverty.

Initially, the heifers were handed out free to community members identified by extension workers attached to the project. The community members are selected on the basis of need, and their having sufficient land on which to graze the animal. Currently, however, some of the recipients are expected to pay back the cost of the animal in small, monthly repayments, once they are able to generate income from milk sales. Adult heifers cost between Ush250,000 ($143) and Ush300,000 ($171) and beneficiaries pay back at an interest rate of 20 per cent. Calves cost Ush100,000 ($57) at an interest rate of 10 per cent.

Heifer project officials say the charges are not to make money off the recipients, but to encourage them to attach an economic value to the animals.

THIS PROJECT TARGETS mainly women though men have also benefited. Men however tend to drop out from the programme more than women.

All this comes down to encouraging gender equity and family focus. The project also promotes fair sharing of work, decision making, resources and benefits among all members of the family and community. It aims at developing families and helping them achieve a variety of benefits.

According to Patrick Nalele, the country director of the Heifer Project in Uganda, about 45,000 families in Uganda are expected to benefit from the $10.2 million that the country programme will receive as part of the Gates’ grant. Almost six out of 10 beneficiaries are expected to be women — not only due to the fact that they are worse hit by poverty, but also often in a better position to look after the animals.

The project is also teaming up with microfinance companies to give loans to heifer project beneficiaries to enable them buy coolers for the milk they produce and generators to power them when the mains power fails.

According to Ray White, a spokesman for Heifer International, the four-year project targets one million people in specific districts in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Heifer International is partnering with Techno Serve, a US-based non-profit organisation that fights poverty by encouraging business development, and the International Livestock Research Institute, an animal research organisation based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Rather than give handouts, they hope to support communities lift themselves out of poverty by improving their farm output through hard work.

The East African Dairy Development Project will help develop 30 milk collection hubs with cooling plants where farmers will take their raw produce for collection by commercial dairies. This will help small-scale farmers join the growing dairy industry in the region.

It will particularly target women for both the benefits of the project and leadership. It also includes training for 10,000 farmers to become growers of nutritious animal fodder to sell to dairy farmers as supplementary livestock feed.

Many women who have applied for livestock training from the project say it has empowered them economically. One Ms Iga of Seeta, Mukono district, is one of the model farmers in the project and an inspiration to men and women alike. She is the chairperson of Seeta Heifer Project, which brings together beneficiaries in the area, and owns a huge acreage of land where she rears a heifer. She has also planted several kinds of vegetables and bananas. She organises training, especially for low-income residents of the village, and has helped them transform financially and socially.

“It feels good to make a difference in a person’s life while you still can,” she said.

AFRICA IS VERY WELL ENdowed in both natural and human resources, yet nearly 200 million of its people are malnourished because of inadequate food supplies. In fact, currently one in three people in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished.

Comprehensive strategies are needed across the continent to boost agricultural productivity, profitability, and sustainability to ensure that all Africans have access to safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs. Improving animal agriculture is one avenue to improved food security.

Project notes indicate that investments in animal agriculture productivity can directly contribute to food security not only by the introduction of improved animal breeds and crops, but also through integrated farming practices and an improved quality of food storage, support in value adding/processing, and marketing.

Decades of cash handouts from the West in the form of aid have not made any significant inroads into poverty in Africa. In fact, it is the only continent whose population is poorer today than it was two decades ago. The Heifer project shows that rather than give Africa’s poor fish, they should be taught how to fish.