Leaders of the Kanono Women's Organisation, a small-scale farmers association in the Zambezi Region's Sibbinda Constituency, paid a visit to the green schemes in the Kavango East Region.
The team was led by the Councillor of Sibinda Constituency, Micky Lukaezi, and was undertaken to acquire knowledge and replicate good agricultural practices they learned during the visit.
The team has been in the region since Monday.
They visited commercial green schemes as well as small-scale farmers.
The visit is mainly to allow small-scale farmers to acquire knowledge on how to establish and operate green schemes.
"I decided to look into agriculture organisations in my constituency, and then I found the Kanono Woman Association (KWA). In short, they were eager to start a project, and there was a promise that they might get funds, because all I wanted to see was that what was in Kavango would be transferred to Zambezi. Therefore, the purpose of coming is to meet and explore ourselves as far as sunflower production is concerned, starting from the production itself, processing, and marketing it. So the aim of KWA was to start the cooking oil production, and so when I came up with the idea that it was important to bring them to Kavango, where there are massive agriculture projects."
Lukaezi says the aim is to invest in agriculture and promote food security in the region.
He says the knowledge learned during the visit will not end with KWA, it will be shared with youth and women outside KWA as well.
He says at the moment there are no commercial projects in Sibinda Constituency, people only depend on subsistence farming.
Kanono's Woman Association was established in 2019 to improve the livelihoods of the women who formed part of the association through crop farming.
Chairperson of KWA Mercy Eiases says she is grateful for the trip as it has opened their minds to how much input is needed for KWA to reach its goal, which is food security.
"So having come here is just to come and learn and acquire skills and knowledge. I, for one, believe in talking to people who are on the ground. If you go to social media or the internet, you can Google a lot of information, but I am one who believes in what is on the ground. With this familiarisation trip, we have learned a lot with our cousin projects like Shadikongoro, Sikondo, and Ndongalinena, and now finally a project like Mayana that is community-led as our own, and from this one we can draw a lot of experiences, so we want to learn how they have made it this far so we can also go and implement it back home."