Refugees turn Tongogara into a green belt
CHENGETAI MURIMWA
Refugees at Tongogara camp in Chipinge district, Manicaland Province, have turned the arid land into a green belt as their farming activities are thriving.
The refugees have also embarked in different income generating projects such as piggery, apiculture, fisheries, poultry and biogas.
“The Tongogara Irrigation Scheme has 50 hectares under irrigation. Each household engaged in this farming project has been allocated 0,1 hectare for family consumption.
“The resident Agritex officer builds the capacity of these farmers by working in partnership with World Vision,” Lovemore Dumba, the project manager for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Zimbabwe Livelihoods Unit told journalists during a recent tour of the camp.
He added: “At this camp, the demand for land remains high. We are working on increasing the individual families’ pieces of land to 0,25 hectares. We emphasise the promotion of farming ventures due to the uncertainty of social protection mechanisms.”
Another thriving project that the refugees have embarked on is the clean energy system of biogas.
Nosa Boad the WASH officer for UNHCR said they use pig faecal matter to generate biogas.
“We no longer use the common method of digging up pits. We have embraced recent development in biogas technology. We use composite canvas material to produce low-pressure methane gas.
“The gas is used for cooking and powers our two restaurants. We also get five to six hours of cooking energy produced per digester out of the five we have here,” Boad said.
Edward Kallon, the United Nations in Zimbabwe Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator said the projects were developed to improve the institutional and technical capacity of refugees, asylum seekers, and host communities in Zimbabwe to adopt innovative solutions for self-reliance and enhance economic livelihoods.
Johannes Mhlanga, the administration manager of the Tongogara Refugee Camp said the projects’ intended impact was to bolster employment opportunities for refugees, asylum seekers, and the host communities, build knowledge on how to combat gender based violence and develop skills through training on market access and links, operation, and maintenance of field projects — the innovative water, energy, and scale-up agricultural productivity through irrigation solutions.
The African Development Bank has been funding the projects since October 2018 to December last year.
