Recommendations

Sustainability Management Actions

Responsibility

1. In future programming, the project team should engage (early in the project designing stage) with community leaders, the Chiefs in particular who are the custodians of the land, much prior to project implementation as the land tenure system and eventual allocation of land may take months or a year in some chieftaincies. This engagement should also consider having a budget for the payment of a cow as part of the “kukhonta system”.

Engagement of traditional leaders will be a core protocol activity undertaking for enhanced support for both strategic and operational project needs for  UNDP-supported interventions.

Implementing Partner/UNDP e.g. SNPAS 00091061 Project

1. The project team should consider having training of farmers on agri-business principles as they apply to farming. This would enable the farmers to be in position to keep proper records of farming, the sales the inputs, quantities of production and calculate profits/loses made. The project team should monitor keeping of records by the farmers so as to empower them on accounting procedures.

NAMBOARD will provide training refresher/courses for the farmers on business management. In addition, technical support will continue being provided  for the Mpatheni Scheme by the Ministry of Agriculture through a Designated Officer for improved business management skills by the farmers.

The Ministry of Agriculture  working with NAMBOARD has placed an Extension Officer in the RDA to provide support to the schemes.

1. The project team should also consider having a separate CSA operational account for running the logistics and acquiring of project implements. The account will run the machinery, transport for officers, fuel, repairs and replacement of the implements. This will minimise the undue delays associated with Government procurement procedures.

Buidling on the existing Revolving Fund, the continuous income accrued by the Farming Schemes will used for purchasing equipment and implements for increased adoption of the CSA technology.

Swaziland Farmers Association/NAMBOARD

1. More CSA farming implements ought to be purchased, particularly the no till planter and boom sprayer which are in high demand yet only two were purchased to service five areas RDAs. At least, the project should consider purchasing 3 more of these implements if the benefits of CSA are to be fully realised.

Same as above

Swaziland Farmers Association/NAMBOARD

1. The project beneficiaries should immediately establish fund that will cater for the maintenance of the drip irrigation scheme and procurement of any replacement parts that may be damaged in the long run. The fund will further enhance sustainability of the CSA project once the donor funding has ended. The fund will be managed by the farmers through approved management structures with the group.

Lessons from the use of the Revolving Fund management will be adopted and cater for maintenance of the drip irrication system and scheme.

Swaziland Farmers Association/NAMBOARD

1. Limited use of technology for systematic information management (documentation, storage and sharing). The evaluation suggests a procurement of a vegetable management software system (e.g. Plan-A-Head, Farm-soft) that will do planning and management controls, production inputs, irrigation details, purchases of pesticides, volume of produce per farmer, dates of expected harvesting, can estimate crop per farm per week, can assist in the planning of the backhouse activity and traceability of produce by farmers. (See annex 6 for costing of software).

There will be development of soft-ware for improved management of the farmers databases in terms of mapping and management of production schedules as well as value chain enhancement and trouble shooting, by Decemebr 2017.

NAMBOARD