December 30, 2021
How A Zambian Entrepreneur Is Helping Farmers In Her Country And Helping Battle Climate Change
She is among a new wave of budding, talented, and innovative Black leaders helping solve some of the world’s problems. A social entrepreneur, Lukwesa won the Resolution Social Venture Challenge (SVC) at Mastercard Foundation’s Baobab Summit earlier this year for her project, MSN reported.
Her ingenious system blends fish farming and vegetable production, using organic waste from the fish instead of costly fertilizer, according to CAMFED. It is geared to be built with locally available, sustainable materials and suits any land type. That includes areas not having soil or adequate water supply.
The agripreneur says her project is a compartment system made of bamboo that promotes fish and vegetable farming while recycling water.
“Promoting systems of farming like aquaponics is very important [to tackle the] climate crisis because it uses 90% less water than traditional agriculture, is 70% more productive, does not require soil, does not have weeds, has fewer pests, and can be built at any scale anywhere in the world using available resources like bamboo,” Lukwesa told CAMFED.
As well as advancing sustainability, Mobile Aquaponics aims to back women farmers.
“We project to reach over 2,000 rural women farmers over the next five years,” Lukwesa stated. “We hope that our farmers will be able to replicate the idea by building their own aquaponics systems using locally available bamboo and improving agricultural production and livelihoods so that no girl will spend a term out of school because of lack of school fees or a uniform.”
Lukwesa hopes her concept help reduce poverty in Zambia and her urban farm become a model there.
My plan is to replicate the system in my rural community back in Zambia to improve the sustainability of food production and nutrition in marginalized communities,” she said. “I also plan to work with other female smallholder farmers to incubate this idea at CAMFED’s climate-smart demonstration farm in Chinsali, Zambia, training young women to farm fresh fish and vegetables locally, sustainably and using local natural resources.”