ASNAPP Country 4 Ps
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| They cast down their crowns - and their gowns! |
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| Written by Hanson Arthur |
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As a University, Stellenbosch has committed itself to serving African communities in order to move from being successful to being significant in an ever-changing global arena. Therefore, the University has targetted the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals and has infused these into specific focus areas. These include, among others;
In line with the OSP, the Stellenbosch intellectuals paid a working visit to Livingstone, the tourist capital of Zambia where ASNAPP runs a number of community projects jointly with the Sun International hotel. The hotel, located within the enclave of the mighty Victoria Falls, naturally draws tourists to the area creating a huge market for food, art and craft. A plan to harness the food component of the market partly gave birth to the ASNAPP project in the Livingstone area.
In an area where the hoe and cutlass form two of the most sophisticated agricultural implements, farmers in the rural peripheries of Livingstone could only live from hand-to-mouth, at best. Most of them fell within the poverty bracket surviving on less than $1 a day. By introducing simple-but-effective agricultural technologies to this area, the farmers in some cases have had their yields quadrupled. A combination of protected and open field cultivation, coupled with regular monitoring visits from ASNAPP to address on-field challenges is proving immensely successful in Livingstone.
The increased yield met with market access brokered with the Sun International hotel. The hotel and ASNAPP have since 2006 lived in this symbiotic relationship in which the former gets consistent supply of various vegetables, and the latter delivers income and development to its beneficiaries. This is why the ASNAPP-Sun Project means so much to the beneficiary farmers. And this is where the Stellenbosch Rector and his Vice saw the synergies between the University and ASNAPP. Combating pandemic poverty will mean lifting farmers like Stephen Chimuka Mwinga who once roamed the streets of mainland Livingstone searching for menial jobs but now has a huge vegetable farm and employing others, thanks to ASNAPP. Promoting food security means empowering widows like Mrs Melania Chipungu of the Mitengo Women Association in Lusaka, so she too could empower others of her kind. This way, they could together feed their families and not wonder where their next meal would come from. To them, this is food security.
It is only when the 'bottom billion' including people like the 56-year old visually impaired Josephine Kanyanga - mother of four and member of the Linda farmers group receive a decent income to provide accommodation for themselves and their families (as they did recently with the support of ASNAPP), that the University could have attained the objective of promoting human dignity. And yes, all these superlatives will certainly not be worthwhile unless ASNAPP can assure the next generation of a sustainable future that a truly development endeavour like the ASNAPP-Sun Project, would have served its cause. On these four overarching objectives, ASNAPP and the Stellenbosch University are equally yoked together. This is perhaps what drove the Rector and the Executive Director to bend down and to pick a hoe each in yonder Zambia, in a symbolic demonstration of getting practical, and to share the same farming field with ASNAPP. A new dawn of development paradigm where Universities take a vanguard role is certainly here!
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