Pilot Village The GOAL of the Pilot Villages is to develop, demonstrate and spread a model for rural Africa to evade hunger and poverty sustainably
The success can be seen since 1996 in Karagwe / Kagera /Tanzania. The main areas for the next phase are Mpanshya and Namwala/ Zambia in the Miombo Region. This approach is based on the integrated rural development model which is similar to that of the Millennium Village. The Pilot Village approach goes for the biggest final utility, which means success goes before need and leads to the choice of factors promising easy conditions and a big difference between the low initial live-standard of the target group and a potentially high level after the intervention. The main advantage of the Pilot Village approach is that it sources mainly on locally available resources. This is important for a very poor target-group in a pre-monetary economy, where costs are reducing farm- and household incomes and where inputs do not yet develop leverage as investments. This approach considers the fact, that poverty and malnutrition, as well as under-development in general, are rooted in a complex system of factors with insufficient performance. That means, that approaches have to be multi-sectorial in order to deal with some so called surrounding conditions. Isolated approaches, focusing on single factors in a system, prove to fail often being jeopardized by surrounding or causal problems. The Pilot Village approach considers both integration and local concentration but tries to be more focused on identifying the different factors of intervention through a cybernetic analysis. This method of analysis leads to less factors and sector approaches, according to the organization’s core qualification and the factor’s role in the system. Contrary to the Millennium Village approach, local resources play the most important role and subsidization is seen more critical in causing the side-effect of a taking-mentality.
Participatory land-use planning is pre-condition for interventions. Livestock for manure and protein are identifying, as interdependent and synergistic factors, while water for health livestock and horticulture is identifiable as an independent sector (in our case mainly considered important for production) while other institutions provide the major part of services in the water sector. In order to multiply results every activity is accompanied by a learning and teaching component. Implementers are accompanied by qualified Extensionists from the village but also from outside in order to transfer field-experience in both directions and to train Extensionists to spread success (See below Farmers Academy). The project proposed here clearly prioritizes interventions to reach the goal of improved nutrition and increased incomes as follows:
- 1st priority: Integration of livestock
- 2nd priority: sustainable, profitable crop-production
- 3rd priority: value-chain and appropriate technologies
Water-supply is only improved, where necessary within production and value-chain. The interaction of factors within the system help to distinguish between interlinked factors, essential sectors/factors of focused intervention and those that can be left to other players.