Another Award

As journalists, sometimes when we write stories that are broadcast on radio, TV or published in newspapers or magazines, we think, nobody is watching, but there are people always watching what we report.

 

This is what first came to my mind when I was told that I had been selected as the best Electronic Journalist in the Media Strategy HIV Awards of the Malawi government's Ministry of Health made public on Friday, August 27, in the commercial city of Blantyre.
 

I was among five journalists who have been awarded in the competition whose entries were called for way back in 2008.This gives me pleasure that my work as a reporter is being recognized.

This is my second award in a short space of time having been recognized best 2009 Business Journalist of the Year by the Malawi Chapter of the Media Institute for  Southern Africa.

Winners in the competition were given cash prices.

The awards are part of the ministry’s Media Strategy on HIV and AIDS launched in 2003, according to deputy director of information Mr. Aubrey Sumbuleta.

Mr. Sumbuleta said during the award ceremony that the aim is to enable journalists understand issues of HIV/AIDS at the same time helping them to write stories that have impact on their audiences.

Minister of information Mr. Simon Vuwa Kaunda, who was the guest of honor, said the media has a role not only to disseminate HIV and AIDS information, but make people stop risky behaviors, and talk freely on the pandemic.

According to one of the five judges that scrutinized stories, Mr. Levi Zeleza Manda, a journalism lecturer at the Polytechnic in Blantyre, the stories that merited honor needed to prove that they had impact, the writer showed courage, gender balance, and commendable general presentation in terms of grammar.

I was recognized for a story that traced two women from Mchinji, a district located in central Malawi to prove the possibility of prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV where proper measures are followed. Temwa Mhango of Radio Tigawane was my runner-up.

In the photo journalism category the winner was Emmanuel Simpokolwe of the Lilongwe-based Guardian News Paper who shot pictures about living positively – living a comfortable life despite being HIV positive.

In the print category there were two winners-  Henry Mchazime – runner up with his story about  the other side of domestic violence,  “what HIV aids does to exacerbate the spread of HIV”.

An overall winner is Lucus Botoman, who wrote about women of Chikwakwa Village in Balaka going for HIV test voluntarily. Both are from Blantyre Newspapers Limited.

Enhancing Rural Farming through Radio - the case of Mlera Nthaka on ZBS

 
Radio has been described as the most powerful tool to inspire change of mindset in people. This is a widely perceived notion, but practically not an easy thing to achieve. 

In fact, not many radio stations have a thing to showcase in this respect. If at all they have, then most have fallen short of bringing up evidence to support their case.


Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) has a different story in rural Malawi. 


In three villages where the bulk of the populace could not harvest enough maize to last 12 months due to poor soils, now the story is largely different.  


People of Lavu, Makombe and Lovimbi in Mvera Extension Planning Area in the area of Traditional Authority Chiwere in Dowa got their fortune through a research project of the African Farm Radio Initiative (AFRRI). 


Through the radio programme run under the initiative Mlera Nthaka, or Soil Conservation in English, people of these three rural communities have adopted two significant farming technologies that could have a long lasting impact on their food security. 


The AFRRI project rolled out in Malawi in 2007 with the sole aim of researching on the role of radio in promoting agriculture.


It involved five radio stations drawn from the private, public and community spectrum. 
The process a Participatory Radio Campaign (PRC) in which the participating radio stations, extension workers and farmers, conducted a baseline survey to identify key agriculture problems in the impact areas.


The first phase spanning between 2007 and 2008, ZBS focused on the use of Vetiver grass in controlling soil erosion. 


In the second phase from September 2009 to April 2010, the focus was on proper use of organic manure. 


The 30-minute weekly programme I produced was aired every Friday from 18:30 local time and repeated on Tuesday from 16: 30.


As the research project comes to an end this September, AFRRI Malawi Coordinator, Mr Rex Chapota says primary results point to something important. He says one notable outcome is that farmers adopt quickly agriculture technologies aired through radio messages when they are involved in the programming process.

“As we all know we have few extension workers in the country, the research has indeed proved that radio is a major means of communication to encourage farmers adopt technologies. We have seen that farmers who followed exactly what they heard on the programme will have a bumper maize harvest,” Mr Chapota told this reporter during an exhibition and award ceremony organized to mark the official closure of the project.


According to Mvera Agriculture Extension Planning Area Coordinator Mr. Andrew Kaipanyama, the acreage using manure in the impact areas has increased in the last six months owing to the radio program. “We have seen a tremendous change. Previously in this area, the acreage of farm land applied with organic manure used to be 1068. But now, the figure has increased to 3205 hectares,” he observed. 


Mr. Kaipanyama says the rate of soil degradation in the three villages has also decreased owing to lessons on the use Vetiver grass as a means of controlling soil erosion and water runoff.


Mr. Chapota says, there are expectations that the results of the two campaigns combined will lead into a bigger project. 


“This was a research project…we are documenting the lessons and we will be submitting our report to donors to show them what radio can do. We hope from these lessons we can come up with the second phase to implement a bigger project on the role of radio in agriculture,” he said.
The lead researcher says it is his hope that people in the three villages will continue following the messages they heard in the radio programme even after the closure.


“The major issue for me is whether the farmers are convinced that the technology they are being taught is important. When they know that the technology is important for their food security, they will continue using it,” explained AFRRI national coordinator.


At the closure of its second campaign ZBS awarded its impact communities with a radio set each as a way of encouraging them to continue listening to agriculture programs on the network. 
The communities also received three shovels each while twelve individual farmers received plastic buckets to be used in boosting their organic manure production.


AFRRI is a 42-month action research project implemented in five sub-Saharan African countries: Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Uganda, and Tanzania. 


The collaboration of Farm Radio International (formerly Developing Countries Farm Radio Network) and World University Service of Canada (WUSC) is funded through a US$4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


Its goal is to gather, implement, evaluate, and share best practices for using radio-based communication strategies to enhance food security in rural Africa.


But it also offered capacity-building and training services for broadcasters in the five selected radio stations as a way of helping them improve their programming skills for rural listeners.


Adding onto Zodiak, other radio stations involved in the project in Malawi are Mudziwanthu Community of Mchinji bordering Zambia, Nkhotakota Community of Nkhotakota, Dzimwe Community Radio of Mangochi and public broadcaster Malawi Broadcasting Station.

Combined Manure : A mixture For Success

Poor farmers in Africa are increasingly advised to fertilize their farm fields. Is this the best way forward?

Poor farmers in Africa are increasingly advised to fertilise their farm fields to improve soil fertility and, therefore, optimize produce, a dream they cherish in their whole life.
However, obtaining and using fertiliser is not as easy; chemical fertilisers are expensive and animal manure or compost is bulky and difficult to obtain in required quantities.

In Malawi, for example, a 50 kilogramme bag full of basal dressing fertilizer costs about 11 thousand kwacha while there are no onestop animal manure or compost availabilities.

Science has proven that use of chemical fertilizers has long term negative effects on soil texture, crop production and the environment. But there is some good news emerging.

Recent crop trials in Malawi suggest that using a combination of organic and inorganic fertiliser can give farmers good results. I spoke to crop scientist Moses Munthali, and asked him to explain more about the trials, and what they have revealed.

Any experienced farmer would agree that organic fertilisers supply most of the nutrients. On the other hand use of chemical fertilizer on its own can be very costly.

For example, crop scientist Moses Munthali, says if a farmer applies 92 kilogrammes of nitrogen per hectare then sh/e have to apply over eight tons or even 10 tons or 12 tons.

Realistically, very few farmers can afford to produce such quantities of manure.

 “That is why we wanted to see if we can possibly reduce the quantities, the quantities that farmers can manage to produce. But at the same time also, if you look at the chemical fertiliser, they are very expensive.

“Farmers are only able to get maybe one bag or two. So we wanted to see if we can make a combination to maximize production,” says Dr. Munthali.

How the research was done

“What we did was we used the compost manure alone and then we also used the chemical fertiliser alone and then we also combined. We use half nitrogen from the chemical fertiliser and then the other half from the organic fertilizer”.

“So from our findings we got 3.5 tons of maize grain yield from the organic fertiliser and then where we used only inorganic fertiliser we got 4.6 tons. While in combination of the chemical and organic we got 6.6 tons per hectare”.

According to Mr Munthali, this means if a farmer just use inorganic alone or organic alone get less than two tons but if they combine with chemical fertilizer they get over two and a half tons.

The combined use of organic manure and chemical fertilizer can indeed make a difference, if the views of one farmer from Malawi’s central region are anything to go by.

Mrs. Pansipowuma Ngoni from Dowa district uses a combination of organic manure and chemical fertilizer in her maize garden. But how long has she been doing this?

“I have been using organic manure and chemical fertiliser for three years. I do this because sometimes I lack money, so when I apply manure…organic manure I can still get something from my field”.

Mrs. Ngoni says when a farmer applies manure it is like you are retaining soil fertility in the soil and then your crops are usually healthy.

“We have some methods that we follow. We apply organic manure in the trenches or sometimes on the planting stations and then later on when we plant our crops, that is when we apply chemical fertilizer”, she says.

Challenges

There are usually some challenges when you want to transport your organic manure from home because we usually do this at home and we want to transport it from home to the gardens. It is usually a long distance and sometimes you are hurt in the process, says Mrs. Ngoni, adding that, in some cases you have like broken glasses in the manure and when you are trying to get it out from wherever you made the manure you get hurt.

For a rural farmer like Mrs. Ngoni is there any formal method to prove that mixing organic manure and chemical fertilizer. No. What matters to her is not the mathematics, but what she is able to see with her eyes.

“Usually I do not budget on how much money I save after I have combined the use of organic manure and chemical fertiliser but I see the difference because when you apply organic manure the bags that you apply of chemical fertiliser will be less than when you only use chemical fertiliser in your garden. I think there is a still a difference” she says

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For more information: www.agfax.net/ post@agfax.net or www.zodiakmalawi.com

restoring malawi's fish population

Fish is the most reliable source of protein in Malawi. Most of the fish on the market in Malawi comes from Lake Malawi which runs almost covering the length of the country from the North. There are a number of species of fish in the waters of Malawi, most of them known to be tasty and nutritious. The majority of the species are the tilapia family.The chambo fish are the most exclusive of the tilapia in Malawi.

However, the fish in most water bodies in Malawi face danger of extinction. This is a growing problem world over. Over-fishing and pressure continue to threaten fish sources and where nothing is being done by way of redress, the situation deteriorates

Twenty years ago, Lake Malawi-also known as the calendar lake because it runs almost 365 kilometres- could produce 30,000 tons of fish every year. That’s history.

Today, fishermen struggle to catch a mere 2000 tons of fish from the same lake as fish stocks are fast disappearing. This has called for instant action to ensure that fish continues to be accessible. And the Malawi government is encouraging the efforts.

One readily available option is fish farming and that has begun in Malawi although at a considerably slow pace given the rate of consumption of available fish.

In our special report this week George Kalungwe looks at existing available solutions and efforts being employed to ensure that fish is accessible to all, all year round.

Malawi is famous for its beautiful lake, which covers one third of the country.

And it is not surprising that fish from the lake are a very important food for Malawians.

In fact, fish provide 70 per cent of the protein eaten in the country. But fish in the lake are becoming scarce.

Over the last 20 years, the amount of fish being caught in the lake has decreased from around 30,000 tons per year, to around 2000 tons.

And the reasons for this decline? Population growth and over-fishing.

In response, the Malawi government is encouraging people to do fish farming, also known as aquaculture.

Up to now, however, the adoption of fish farming has been very slow.

One major problem for new fish farmers is that good quality fish seed and young fish – known as fingerlings – are not easily available in the country.

Daniel Jamu, is a scientist at the World Fish Centre, explains the problem.

“One of the major bottlenecks for aquaculture is the availability of quality seed. Presently, until recently, the government has been the major supplier of quality seed and farmers have been exchanging fingerlings not through well organised hatcheries but just using fingerlings which remain after harvest. So these also have led to problems of productivity,” he says.

Agnes Kachepa left her job as a teacher several years ago to start a fish farming business.

Now, the money she makes through aquaculture is much more than her former teaching salary.

But she says she needs good quality fingerlings to help her improve her yield and allow her to play her part in improving Malawi’s fish farming output.

So how can the supply of good quality small fish be improved?

A development programme called Research into Use, funded by the UK government, is trying to help.

The programme has created what it calls a Platform for Fish Farming Innovation.

Through this platform, private companies are now getting involved in breeding good quality fish seed.

“Research Into Use we have assisted the platform with an innovation fund which we call Seed Money so as to involve the various sectors in the platform to assist in making the fingerlings more available. So in this context the platform was decided to involve the private sector to assist in the multiplication of the improved strains of the fingerlings,” says Nobel Moyo, coordinator of the programme in Malawi.

Malawi’s National Aquaculture Centre is one of the partners in the fish farming platform.

The Centre is using high quality floating nets, called hapas, to breed thousands of fingerlings.

John Kandapo, a research officer at the Centre, admits this is something that farmers would find difficult to do on their own.

“Farmers do not have capacity like we have here. They have small ponds and even the modern hatchery we have here the farmers do not have them. And also the financial constraints to buy these hapas, they are expensive like you can see here, we bought these from Thailand,” Mr. Kandapo says.

Working together, the National Aquaculture Centre and the World Fish Centre have developed a very strong breeding programme to produce high quality young fish.

These fish are able to grow 60 per cent faster than the ones that Malawi’s fish farmers have been raising themselves.

Mr. Daniel Jamu explains, the programme is working with several private fish hatcheries. 

“What we have done through the support of the Research Into Use Programme is to increase capacity at three private hatcheries and these hatcheries have been given money to increase capacity.

“This capacity is in terms of monitoring both production and environmental and this capacity also has enabled them to start using high quality feed for production of fingerlings.

“We hope that with this they should be able to produce fish which is free from disease, of good condition but also we know the age of the fingerlings so that farmers can now start using quality fingerlings,” says Mr. Jamu.

As well as improving the supply of fingerlings, Malawi’s Fish Farming Innovation platform is also looking at other major challenges, such as supply of good quality feed, extension services and the need for better information and marketing systems.

But despite these challenges, John Kandapo is positive about the future for fish farming.

“Yes a special message to farmers that if they take fish farming as a serious business then there is real potential for them to improve their incomes,” he says.

Mr. Nobel Moyo is also very pleased with the direction that fish farming in Malawi is now taking as more and more individuals demonstrate interest in contributing to increased access to fish protein.

Fish farming has thus mushroomed in most parts of the country and this is a development that should demonstratively be encouraged.

Malnutrition continues to be a bother in Malawi because access to affordable high nutritive value foods is minimal. Fish farming is evidently one sure way of making sure that protein is always available to every citizen.

Through the on-going work as well, fish farming in Malawi is improving and helping to reduce pressure on the waters of the country’s famous lake.

So while stock replenish in beautiful Lake Malawi, upland, people are not left wanting of this important food supply; fish.