Zimpapers Logo

Central province has harvested less than one tonne of maize per year from his two-hectare field. He has also watched helplessly as predators killed his cattle.
“Sometimes, we went for days on end without food,” said Mairosi. “In times of drought, we had to walk for at least 15km to the nearest safe water point.”
For decades, life has been a struggle in this harsh environment, but Mairosi says things were not as bad as they are now.
“There are no good rains anymore,” he complains. “The sun was always hot, but these days it feels like it’s moved closer. We are being baked.”
Most of the district’s land is marginal to agricultural production. As a result, there remain large tracts of open forest and veldt, interspersed with people living in a fragile environment. The crops grown are often prone to fail in times of drought, worsening the livelihood of rural communities. And Mairosi is no exception.
But, there is another way that works.
For many years in the past, these communities have largely depended on natural resources for their livelihoods. These rural communities have also been conscious of the need for the sustainable utilisation of biodiversity.
The large number of natural resources found within Rushinga’s communal lands, and the diverse rural livelihoods, suggests that there is a range of opportunities that can be derived from their management and utilisation.
Mairosi is a beneficiary of Community-Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) – a relatively new concept in Southern Africa involving rural communities in sustainable environmental conservation.
For much of this century, natural resource managers in Southern Africa tended to restrict wildlife management to national parks and game reserves to preserve hunting areas.
More recent thinking, however, has recognised the vital role played by all ecosystems, habitats and populations of species in keeping a healthy environment. It has also been recognised that many of the methods of natural resources management traditionally used by rural communities can be very effective as forces for conservation than colonial policies which alienated people from their resources.
Over the last two decades or so, CBNRM has been practiced in Southern Africa with considerable success. It has been explored as a combined development and conservation approach in the region and is often portrayed as a solution for conservation challenges such as poverty alleviation, reduction of pressure on the use of natural resources whilst protecting biodiversity and important ecosystems. In development terms, it is relatively a new concept – and is still proving itself, according to the Zimbabwe National CBNRM Forum.
Through CBNRM, rural people, whose opinions never mattered in the past, now make decisions on issues affecting their lives.
As much as it is an economic, medicinal and nutritional safety net in times of hardship, Zimbabwe’s natural resource base is, at all times, the bio-physical foundation on which the nation is built. In the essentially dryland country that is Zimbabwe, a healthy natural resource base is integral to the sustenance of the land’s ecological productivity.
Nearly 40 percent of Zimbabwe’s economic activity is derived, directly or indirectly, from natural resource-based activities – including each of the Big Three: mining, agriculture and tourism.
About 75 percent of the nation’s population live in communal and resettlement areas, and they collectively contribute 80 percent of its staple food crop production every year. Whichever way you look at these, and a great many other statistics, there is no avoiding the fact that the country’s future depends, to a very significant extent, on its ability to maintain a healthy natural resource base, especially in its communal and resettlement areas.
Back in the early 1990s, a groundbreaking research in Chivi district in Masvingo province found that poorest 20 percent of rural people, on average, derived only 13 percent of their annual household cash income from arable and pastoral agriculture.
Natural products, on the other hand, contributed nearly 37 percent of their annual cash income, while 28,5 percent came from remittances from relatives in other parts of the country. The balance came from informal selling their own labour, and from small-scale enterprises.
It is, however, ironic that, historically, so much support has been given to rural communities aimed at increasing their agricultural production, and so little has been devoted towards increasing their natural product income opportunities.
Local level management of resources remains a vital option for creating opportunities for people to manage and benefit from wildlife and other natural resources.
During the past 17 years, a local non-governmental organisation, the Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources (SAFIRE), has been facilitating the development of businesses that use natural resources, especially from plants, the rationale being that these will be conserved since they are critical to raising incomes. These community-based enterprises include honey, oils, tea, jams and pulp, among others.
Trade in natural products has proved to be more profitable than agriculture in Southern Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe. For example, in 10 Southern African countries, current trade in baobab products is over US$11 million annually, while potential trade has been projected at over US$961 million a year, according to a publication, Moving Forward in Zimbabwe: Reducing poverty and promoting growth, published by the University of Zimbababwe’s Institute of Environmental Studies (IES) in December 2010.
“Community-based natural product enterprises are commercial ventures which seek to supply markets with value-added natural products to bring greater benefits to communities that manage and use natural products,” says Gladman Kundhlande,the Director General of SAFIRE.
SAFIRE is working with rural communities in 21 districts in Zimbabwe. To this end, it has supported communities in the production of 21 highly nutritional natural foods. Out of these, 13 are currently on the market – Makoni tea, Resurrection tea, Masau jam, Masau strips, mazhanje jam, Marula jelly, Marula oil, baobab oil, indigenous vegetables, Mopani worms, baobab pulp, honey and jatropha soap.
Eight are at the moment not on the market. These include baobab yorghut, nyii drink (Berchemia), nyii jam, mazhanje drink, parinari oil, parinari jam, kigelia extracts and herbal remedies. The organisation has also managed to link communities to private companies for the production of these natural products.
“The development of natural resource-based enterprises that are part of the local and global economy have been recognised as providing significant economic incentives and creating opportunities for local communities to be more involved in natural resources management,” says Kundhlande.
Kundhlande adds: “This has witnessed the development of a wide range of community-based enterprises such as simple producer groups and associations, to sophisticated joint ventures and partnerships.”
In recent years, for example, herbal teas have become popular with high-income earners around the world. It is this potential that led SAFIRE to promote the commercialisation of Makoni Tea and Resurrection tea
The 300 – strong small-scale member rural producers Makoni Indigenous Tea Producers Association in Nyanga District, in Manicaland Province, is harvesting Makoni Tea and Resurrection bush tea.
Coming from a wild bush (Fadogia ancylantha) and Myrothamnus flabellifolius respectively both which grow in the Eastern Highlands and other parts of Zimbabwe.
The Makoni bush is traditionally used to build stamina, boost the immune system, tone muscles, and strengthen bones and as an aphrodisiac while Resurrection tea is used to treat hypertension, colds, flus general aches and pains, kidney troubles, menstrual pains and nightmares.
Makoni Tea was commercialised for the first time in Zimbabwe in July 2001 through a partnership between the Makoni Tea Producers Association, and SAFIRE.
The Association harvests and primarily processes Makoni Tea leaves which it sells to Specialty Foods of Africa, a private company, which then markets the tea under the brand name Tulimara.
Speciality Foods of Africa is responsible for processing, packaging and marketing of the tea. SAFIRE trains the rural producers in business skills and sustainable harvesting of the tea.
Because a large sector of the community is now involved in the business of harvesting, these individuals have begun to realise the importance of conserving their environment and forest. Before, there were often forest fires but this has been reduced.
“The mushrooms and other wild fruits we haven’t seen in a long time are re-appearing,” says a member of the Association. Every purchase of Makoni Herbal Tea provides an increased income and greater financial security for communities in the Eastern Highlands.
Consumers who purchase Makoni Herbal Tea are also contributing directly to the management and sustainable utilisation of the Makoni bush. A purchase of Makoni Tea provides economic empowerment to the community, which in turn encourages them to protect their source of income.
Speciality Foods of Africa works in partnership with rural producers around Zimbabwe to produce natural, fairly traded food products using indigenous resources.
One farmer can realise an income of $.90.per month for four to six months a year that they dedicate to natural products.
However, there have been challenges in penetrating the European (EU) and American markets, according to Nyarai Kurebgaseka, of Speciality Foods of Africa. Only baobab pulp has successfully been accepted in the European market.
“Products unknown to the EU and which have not been consumed there prior to 1998 cannot be exported to the EU without going through Novel Foods Registration,” says Kurebgaseka. This is a process that takes up to five years and will require not less than US$200 000 to complete. For products which do not require NFR, a distributor should bee identified first with whom amicable trade terms must be negotiated before one exports.
In the community enterprise model, there is a great need to consider the availability, quality and quantity of the resource, access to markets and improved benefits to the community groups, advises Kundhlande..
“Also, there should be investment in product research and development as well as enhancing incentives in the products. This should be combined with market linkages while communities should be made aware of value chains of new products”.
The commercialisation of natural products has managed to secure rural livelihoods in the face of fragile agricultural systems and frequent crop failures that characterise the communal lands of Zimbabwe.
Most of the people in Zimbabwe still live in areas of marginal agricultural potential. Under such conditions, and in view of livelihood diversification, commercialising natural resources can reduce poverty while conserving the environmental resource base.
[email protected]