Zambia has launched the Irrigation Development Fund (IDF), with an initial injection of K37 billion ($9 million), which is expected to revolutionise agriculture in the country.
Agricultural and Cooperatives Minister, Ben Kapita, said the long-awaited programme was targeted at putting 70,000 hectares of land countrywide under irrigation and said that the sector would never remain the same.
Speaking during the launch of the IDF, Kapita said 75 per cent of the Fund had been set aside for small-scale and emergent farmers ,while the commercial farmers would get 16 per cent. Nine per cent would go towards equipment manufacturing and development.
Kapita said government had deliberately put the initial interest rate for farmers who would access the loan under the fund at nine per cent to make it affordable to all farmers. He warned farmers against defaulting, saying that anyone who would fail to pay back would incur an extra five per cent compound interest as a deterrent.
Under the Fund, eligible farmers would borrow capital for acquisition of irrigation equipment and other requirements. Finance Bank would be the main administrator of the whole fund, but other banks would access it for onward disbursement to the farmers.
"Since the launch in Lusaka of the pilot peri-urban irrigation development component of the IDF in September 2006, over 60 hectares of irrigated land has been recorded. This response has made my ministry seek ways of expanding the peri-urban irrigation initiative to cover other parts of the country," Kapita said.
Transforming agriculture in Zambia called for broadening of innovations to cater for the entire sector and the IDF was one such innovation, he said. Kapita said government would not allow the fund to go under, like many previous efforts had done in the sector. He warned that all farmers found wanting would forfeit their assets, like cattle and tractors, to government.
Kapita told the gathering that crop production should not be confined to the rain season alone, considering that Zambia accounted for 40 per cent of water resources in the region.He said irrigation development support was a top priority under the Fifth National Development Plan and it would be propelled by the IDF.
Currently, irrigatable land was estimated at 425,000 hectares countrywide, out of which only 125,000 hectares, or 25 per cent, was under irrigation.
Times of Zambia