Faith Tariro Chimutsa
The Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) has engaged stakeholders in the irrigation value chain to exchange notes on the subsector’s role in the country’s agricultural sector.
The interaction at the 2023 Annual Irrigation Stakeholders Indaba provided room for “robust debate, honest engagements and practical solutions to challenges”, according to ZINWA director of engineering and hydrological services Eng Takudza Makwangudze.
“It is only when we engage in such, that we are able to also find lasting resolutions to our concerns. As an entity managing a highly strategic resource; water; whose place in the agricultural value chain cannot be overemphasized, we strongly believe that stakeholder engagement and stakeholder involvement is not a choice, but a mandatory component of our business especially at a time when the social licence to operate now carries similar wait as the legal and regulatory ones,” said Makwangudze.
The indaba gathered stakeholders to develop vibrant and strong collaborations that improve efficiencies in the irrigation value chain in order to have a multiplier effect on areas such as food security, employment creation, poverty alleviation and import substitution.
“It is thus our hope and expectation that after this Indaba and as stakeholders, we must be able to find one another and more critically map the way forward on the resolution of any problematic issues,” he said.
Addressing the same indaba Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Dr John Basera challenged the stakeholders to consider crowd -funding towards mobilisation of capital for the irrigation development.
Government is determined to put 350 000 hectares of land under irrigation by 2025 in the quest to ramp up agricultural productivity
