ARDA to transform irrigation schemes
TINASHE MAKICHI
The Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) says it is pursuing major transformation of the country’s irrigation schemes to ensure business viability and sustainability.
The parastatal’s new chief executive officer, Tinotenda Mhiko, told Business Times that ARDA intends to deploy transformative agricultural digital solutions and technologies to both ARDA Estates and Rural Irrigation Schemes to improve efficiencies thereby increasing profitability for both the estates and for rural farmers.
‘We have started working on rural irrigation schemes and community development projects and our main focus is ensuring scheme business viability and sustainability to empower rural farmers in pursuit of Vision 2030,” Mhiko said.
He said the parastatal was also looking at immediately revitalising the Smallholder Dairy Development Programme and Exports with the support of Agriculture Marketing Authority (AMA) and other government departments.
“Considering the land resource ARDA has, there is no reason why the institution should not take its rightful place as an important pillar in the scheme of the national economy. So the long term objective is to build and nurture ARDA’s brand equity,” Mhiko said.
ARDA has substantial land holding across the country comprising of 21 estates with a total of 98,000 hectares of arable land of which 19.4% is irrigable.
The State entity’s interventions in the agriculture sector are divided into two main categories, namely commercial operations and rural development.
Commercial operations involve production of various crops and livestock at the 21 estates which operate as strategic business units (SBUs).
In that regard each SBU maintains separate accounts that it can use to secure funding.
However, in the last decade financing of all the SBUs became a serious challenge despite the floating of the AMA bonds as a source of funding.
Production plummeted to less than 30% of capacity because of lack of funding and the authority responded by adopting strategic public private partnerships (PPPs) financing models to resuscitate operations . To date 18 of its SBUs have entered into partnership with private companies under the PPP scheme.
Under the PPP arrangements, ARDA has used a number of frameworks which ranges from joint ventures, build operate and transfer (BOT), rehabilitate operate and transfer, management contracts, leasing and share farming arrangements for its SBUs in sugar cane, ethanol, horticulture, maize, wheat, tea, safaris and gaming and livestock production.
The most famous PPP entered into by ARDA is the Chisumbanje Estate where a businessman Billy Rautenbach provided working capital and invested US$300m in a sugarcane processing plant under a BOT arrangement.
The resuscitation of the Chisumbanje Estates created direct and indirect employment to thousands of people and has increased the production of ethanol used in the blending of fuel.
ARDA also entered into a partnership with private players in its Antelope Estate to produce cereals. This investment saw 320 direct jobs being created.
In addition to PPPs, ARDA is implementing the Agricultural Based Socio-Economic programmes to improve the livelihoods of rural communities’ throughout-grower schemes and smallholder irrigation schemes. In this scheme, ARDA provides a ready market to contracted farmers as well as extension services in an effort to boost production and productivity. In the same vein, ARDA is funding infrastructures such as centre pivots and water infrastructures.
ARDA also partnered with private sector in the production of cattle in Matabeleland North Province.
In this project, ARDA partnered with Kalimba Investments in the production of livestock and pecan nuts in its Balu Estate in Umguza District.
