A climate change lobby organisation, African Renaissance Sustainable Development (ARSD) says there is a need for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions in agriculture that will assist farmers to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
This comes at a time when, globally, the effects of climate change on agriculture in some countries have resulted in lower crop yields and nutritional quality due to drought, heat waves, and flooding as well as increases in pests and plant diseases.
In an interview, ARSD founder, Mr Nehemiah Chipato said there was a need for collaborated efforts to enhance climate-smart agricultural (CSA) innovations adoption.
“There is a need for access to land, credit, information, and education to enhance multiple climate-smart agricultural (CSA) innovations adoption. Multiple adoptions of CSA innovations yield greater productivity and income dividends than individual adoption.
“The disparities in the impact of multiple CSA adoption are evident by gender and geographic location, hence we also need to develop gender-sensitive policy and institutional efforts towards reducing resource access constraints for CSA should be a priority,” said Mr Chipato.
He said for young entrepreneurs there was a need to support them throughout the process with experts committed to helping the young innovators convert their dreams into reality. Mr Chipato said an essential characteristic of ICT solutions in agriculture was providing young entrepreneurs in agriculture with internet access, training them to improve their ICT skills, and giving them concrete advice on how to market their ideas and access venture capital.
“Workshops, field days, and competitions can help young people in agriculture to become more commercial, while teaching them how to write a business proposal, how to network and what kind of market to target could grow their ventures.”
Mr Chipato said as an organisation they were committed to being the innovators of sustainable socio-economic development framework and they were leading in the implementation, facilitation, co-ordination, technical oversight, and augmenting Government efforts.
He said in line with the country’s socio-economic blueprints, the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) in terms of Rural Development 8.0 and Green Jobs for Rural Youth Employment (GJ4RYE), their goal was to revolutionise the national rural development discourse.
“Our thrust is rural youth and women-centred. We are implementing programmes that directly and indirectly impact the socioeconomic fundamentals of the rural economy.
“This includes agriculture and food security, climate resilience, environmental and cultural preservation, and pecuniary empowerment initiatives.
“We are encouraging bold collective action towards global emission of net zero carbon showcase initiatives and global efforts of addressing the climate and nature crisis,” added Mr Chipato.
In terms of projects, they include a solar farm of 500MW grid-tied ground solar plant at Rio Tinto Agricultural College in Zhombe along the Kwekwe-Gokwe highway, to address clean energy for agriculture production.
The other one being a nutraceuticals hub and value addition plant for student training and commercial production of medicinal and nutritional herbs and plants at Shamva Agricultural College.
He said there will be a Climate Business Dinner meeting during the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) with huge collaborative effort between Climate Sustainability Leaders Forum (CSLF) and award events dedicated to empowering businesses to take decisive actions and achieve climate models, environmental and social transformations through innovative business leadership. – Sunday News
