Byron Mutingwende

Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) in partnership with Universities of Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe have sponsored students’ participation in theatre for policy advocacy and research in agriculture.

The students led by Stella Chimunda, an arts student from the University of Zimbabwe who personifies an academic in agriculture and climate change issues, bring to the fore in their theatrics how theatre can be a useful tool for policy advocacy.

The setting of the drama is in a rural community where smallholder farmers are forced to adapt to effects of climate change through a blending of their traditional knowledge systems with government’s environmental and agricultural policies and modern technologies.

Also speaking during a plenary session on inclusive agricultural value chain on the last day of the 2014 African Green Revolution Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Joseph Rusike, associate programmes officer for the Alliance for a Green Revolution Africa (AGRA) said Sub-Saharan African governments are placing emphasis on expanding private agribusiness investment to drive productivity growth, food security, incomes and poverty reduction.

“It is pleasing to note that most countries have on-going policy initiatives to involve the private sector in growing agriculture. Over 50 countries launched the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP); 30 signed contracts; 27 completed investment plans; and 24 held business meetings with the private sector investors,” Rusike said.

However there is an outcry from agricultural sector players that the initiative targets established companies at the expense of smallholder farmers from Africa that drive food production.