A poultry farmer from Lumbwe village in Malawi hands her chickens to Lydia Katengeza to administer a vaccine against Newcastle Disease. Credit: Charles Mkoka/IPS

By Charles Mkoka
LILONGWE, Sep 27 2017 (IPS)

Lydia Katengeza, a community vaccinator with the Nathenje Community Vaccination Association (NCVA), wakes up as early as 5 a.m., ready with her I-2 vaccine vial in a storage container in her hand. She moves from one house to another, visiting each poultry farmer. All of them are alerted a day in advance so that they don’t release their free-range chickens in the morning.

The first farmer she visited when an IPS reporter accompanied her on her rounds was Maxwell Panganani, who owns 30 chickens. The whole flock was given the vaccine, which protects poultry from the deadly Newcastle Disease (ND) and costs four cents per chicken. This means Katengeza collected 1.24 dollars from this farmer.Raised by 80 percent of local farmers, poultry is the greatest contribution to household food and nutritional security of all livestock species in Malawi.

She moved on to other households: Makalani Kumapeni, whose 51 chickens were given the vaccine; Chipiliro Kanamwali with 11 chickens; Peter Lumbwe with 24 chickens; Zeze Lumbwe with 14 chickens, Frank Thamisoni with 12 chickens and Samuel Asipolo, who just owns one.

Raised by 80 percent of local farmers, poultry is the greatest contribution to household food and nutritional security of all livestock species in Malawi. Farmers use chickens during weddings, funerals and other rituals, and for sale or as gifts. They are also bartered for other products.

However, despite the important role that chickens play in supporting households in rural areas, there is a major constraint to the expansion and increased productivity of poultry – the frequent devastation of flocks, up to 90 percent, according to the Department of Animal Health and Livestock Development (DAHLD). This damage is caused by ND, which strikes during the hot, dry months of August through to November annually.

The virus presents primarily as an acute respiratory illness, and is one of the most serious of all avian diseases. It is also transmissible to humans.

“We were first trained as farmer field facilitators in 2014 under a CARE Malawi programme. Later CARE linked us with Inter Aide, a French organization that provided us training in the procedures of how to be a community vaccinator,” says Katengeza, who is also village head woman of Chizinga in Traditional Authority Kalumbu, Lilongwe district.

According to Katengeza, the knowledge and procedures learnt during vaccine administration have been of great benefit to her as a farmer. As a result of the training, her chickens no longer die of ND. And as a ripple effect, she has also managed to help her fellow farmers to overcome the disease.

“I now have 10 goats, harvested 70 50-kg bags of maize this year, moulded bricks and built a good house. I am also able to pay school fees for my kids. As a family, we have sustained access to proteins as body-building foods from chickens once slaughtered,” says Katengeza.

She said CARE and Inter Aide have changed her life and that of other farmers.

Another farmer, Eveless Makalani, with a flock of 51 birds, has worked with community vaccinators for some time. She learned about them during the farmer extension meetings they conduct in the village.

“My family gets help from these chickens, especially during funerals and weddings, but also in the event of problems. We sell some of them as they are in high demand on the market, unlike hybrids.”

Malakani adds that the money earned from selling one chicken pays for the vaccination of over 50 chickens from ND – making it a viable business.

Yolomosi Tifere, a male community vaccinator who serves farmers in the Nathenje area, said the project should be expanded to include other health supports.

“This vaccine is for ND fine and good. However, we also need other drugs to address bacteria, cough, intestinal worms so that these problems are also taken care of,” Tifere said in an interview during the field visit.

Graça Archer, Programme Officer for Inter Aide Newcastle Disease Control Programme, said each ND campaign is systematic and runs for four months.

“During the first month, community vaccinators go house to house to do poultry registration, like how many chickens to vaccinate, how many vials are needed. The second month is for the actual vaccination of the chickens and the fourth month is for review of the success and challenges.” Archer explained in an interview.

The peak of the campaign takes place in July because the risk of an outbreak is high. This is when farmers have more money and exchange more chickens and there is a greater probability for them to become infected with ND.

“There is more acceptance from the farmers in July than the two other campaigns. For instance, last year we vaccinated 590,800 chickens,” says Archer, who expressed concerns about the erratic supply of the drug from CVL.

In order to ensure sustainability of the programme, NCVA was formed to strengthen local participation in the fight against ND. Meanwhile, the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicine is working in partnership with Inter Aide to improve the nutrition and livelihoods of smallholder livestock producers, and enhance family farm productivity and resilience in an increasingly changing climate.

“The I-2 vaccine is thermal tolerant demand driven, people see the benefit of vaccinating chickens so there is exponential growth for the vaccine need. However, production is not managed as an enterprise due to shortage of financing of the drug, hence its erratic availability,” Archer explained.

Gilson Njunga, Officer in Charge at the CVL, says they produce 3,000 bottles of the vaccine per month which translates to about a million dosages administered to chickens, as each bottle accommodates 300 chickens.

“Production of the vaccine vial is at 3,000 bottles monthly because we produce the vaccine within a diagnostic laboratory and not an independent vaccine lab. As such, the production process has to pass through quality control before being certified for use by farmers to ensure they are not contaminated,” Njunga told IPS.

Meanwhile, as a further step towards attaining food and nutritional security, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Malawi Government agreed on a Country Programme Framework estimated at 24.3 million dollars. The rationale for the proposed CPF priority areas is derived from the analysis and the enabling environment for Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.

The analysis demonstrates that while the country is making good progress in food security and staple crop production, it remains vulnerable to shocks – many climate-related – that impede increased agricultural production, productivity and profitability.

Estherine Fotabong, NEPAD Director of Programmes Implementation and Coordination, in Nairobi, Kenya during the Second Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance Forum. Credit: Charles Mkoka/IPS

By Charles Mkoka
NAIROBI, Oct 14 2016 (IPS)

Two years ago at the 31st African Union Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, heads of state and government endorsed the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) programme on agriculture and climate change with the bold vision of at least 25 million smallholder households practicing Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) by 2025.

This means sustainable food systems and broad-based social and environmental resilience from the household level up. CSA also supports the aspirations and goals in Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the AU Malabo Declaration as well as the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and COP21 Paris climate agreement.

As a result of farmers embracing Climate-Smart Agriculture, some fields are still green and alive even as drought rages in the south of Madagascar. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

IPS correspondent Charles Mkoka caught up with Estherine Fotabong, NEPAD Director of Programmes Implementation and Coordination, at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya during the Second Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance Forum this week to shade more light on some of the initiatives her institution is implementing. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What does the CSA Alliance bring to agriculture and rural development on the African continent?

A: As you know, 2025 is the African Union decision to reach 25 million farmers that are practicing CSA on the continent in order that agriculture remains relevant to the changing weather and climate patterns.  NEPAD being the technical arm, it is part of our responsibility to translate all the decisions into practical actions on the ground. In that respect we have developed partnership and programmes that are targeted to bring support to farmers.

Q: NEPAD cannot do this mammoth task alone considering its footprint is invisible in some states. In terms of synergy, who are you working with on the ground?

A: In terms of partnership we entered in the NEPAD/International Non Governmental (INGOs) Alliance. This is an alliance between NEPAD and five INGO’s working through communities and community-based groups on the ground. As NEPAD, we cannot be present in every country but we realise the role of subsidiary organisations to work with others who have the first engagement with farmers. The alliance can structure their programmes into providing concentrated support to the farmers. This support would either be providing new technologies of farming, inputs that farmers need or availability of credit. But also to adopt practices that help them cope with weather patterns or adapt to innovations that reduce greenhouse gases.

The second area of partnership is the CSA forum. You have seen the last two days that there is a lot of knowledge but this knowledge is sitting on computers. It is not shared for others to utilize. This platform creates space to bring all those working on agriculture, climate change and climate smart agriculture to share experience and knowledge generated through research.

Q: Can you tell our readers what other programmes you’re involved in at the secretariat level as far as issues of building climate change resilience and rural development are concerned across the continent?

A: Resilience-building among farmers is one target coming out of the Malabo Declaration. The declaration reaffirmed the continent’s resolve towards ensuring, through deliberate and targeted public support, that all segments of our populations, particularly women, the youth, and other disadvantaged sectors of our societies, must participate and directly benefit from the growth and transformation opportunities to improve their lives and livelihoods.

So we are working with member states to review the Agricultural Investment Plans, so that issues of climate change can be mainstreamed in their lives. It is clear that we are not going to go far if we don’t ensure that climate change issues are mainstreamed in national development and sectoral policies.

Zambia, for instance, was an early adopter of conservation agriculture, which is an example of climate smart agriculture. According to reports, farmers – particularly women – appreciated the increase in yields as a result of CSA. Yields have translated into increased income, which has translated into improved social economic conditions for their families.

Peter Mcharo’s two children digging their father’s maize field in Kibaigwa village, Morogoro Region, some 350km from Dar es Salaam. Mcharo has benefitted greatly from conservation agriculture techniques. Credit: Orton Kiishweko/IPS

Q: Despite the experimentally proven results in the case of Zambia as you have stated, why is there low uptake of CSA across the continent?

A: The programmes we have try to address those obstacles. These include land ownership, particularly for smallholder farmers, access to finance, access to technologies to take up CSA techniques are some of the challenges.

So through our Gender Climate Change Agriculture Support Programme we hope to reach a significant number of households and women farmers to contribute to the target.  Furthermore, through our Climate Fund programme, we hope to continue to finance grassroots initiatives for the 2025 target. It is our belief that government themselves will put in place investments that will support farmers in their countries to ensure they take on board interventions on CSA so they withstand and cushion shocks brought  about by climate variability.

Q: More women are involved in food production on the continent. However, data shows that in terms of the policy framework embracing gender dimension little is being done by countries to provide an enabling environment for women participation especially when it comes to land ownership. What is your take on this?

A: I have always said that I think it will always be smart for any government to invest in women and make their condition better.

Even in the difficult conditions that they work, women contribute 80 percent of the food we consume in our households on the continent. True that they use these resources to support their families so that brings social cohesion in our communities and countries.

But also, we want to invest in women in terms of supporting their economic empowerment. They will also increase their political participation and empowerment. It is really important that countries give particular attention to policies that favour women, such as policies that make it easier to form women cooperatives. In some countries to register a women’s cooperative they have to pay more money than if it was a men’s cooperative. Why?

Why that kind of discrimination and inequality? The platform has to be equal for both men and women. So we need to develop policies that cut across the board for all stakeholders.

The issue of land is a big question and challenge. We can learn from other countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia. These countries have developed policies that allow for co-ownership of land, so that a woman who is married in a village will not be chased away not to farm when the husband dies, for instance.

Q: In your speech, you hinted at the need to utilise local indigenous knowledge in the face of climate change, together with scientific-backed data. Why is this crucial in resilience-building?

A: We tend to forget what we have been doing over the years and get good results from that. Much as it is important to embrace new knowledge from science, I think we have also good knowledge from what our ancestors have been doing over the years. Such kind of knowledge we should document and replicate.

We should believe that our farmers have knowledge. They have ideas that can be used to cope with climate change. In Cameroon, for instance, fishermen when I visited them described what they had noticed over the years in their area. They explained about the changes in the water level, changes in the seasonal patterns. As such we need to engage with farmers. They have rich information and knowledge that can help us as technocrats to make informed decisions as well.

Excerpt:

NEPAD CEO Ibrahim Assane Mayaki fields questions from reporters at the Second Africa Rural Development Forum in Yaounde, Cameroon. Credit: Charles Mkoka/IPS

By Charles Mkoka
YAOUNDE, Cameroon, Sep 10 2016 (IPS)

The two-day Second Africa Rural Development Forum concluded Friday with renewed calls to economically empower young people, many of whom are leaving the resource-rich continent and migrating to places like Europe under very risky circumstances.

Opening the conference, the director of programmes implementation and communication at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Estherine Fotabong, reminded delegates that Africa’s high economic growth rates have not translated into high levels of employment and reductions in poverty for youth and those living in rural areas.Africa’s fight against poverty, hunger and unemployment will be won or lost in rural areas.

Fotabong observed that Africa’s fight against poverty, hunger and unemployment will be won or lost in rural areas, adding that is what frames the rural transformation strategy and agenda for the entire continent.

“This is the experience of all newly wealthy nations, as the most effective means of expanding the domestic market of their own population whose incomes and purchasing power is growing. Without a growing domestic market, in terms of ever-growing numbers of rural and urban people whose income is growing, then it is difficult to escape structural poverty through an outward looking economy,” Fotabong told a jam-packed conference at the Hilton Hotel in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

She added that Africa has deviated from standard processes of structural transformation in that it is experiencing urbanisation without manufacturing jobs.

Urbanisation should typically be a consequence of economic growth, not a lack of it. Unemployment and poverty are structural not temporary — and this is not mostly self-correcting. There is need for “big push policy interventions,” she stressed.

NEPAD’s Chief Executive Officer Ibrahim Assane Mayaki agreed. “Attaining Africa’s Agenda 2063 aspirations and goals to a large extent depends on the transformation of rural areas,” Mayaki told the audience drawn from across the continent.

Immediately after the opening ceremony, a high-level panel discussion moderated by Mayaki zoomed in on challenges regarding demographic growth, pressure on natural resources, employment creation and economic diversification in designing and implementing new development strategies for job creation in rural areas.

Cameroonian Secretary General of Livestock in the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries Jaji Manu Taiga said the government has pumped close to 100 million dollars into his ministry to revitalise the rural sector. Capacity is also being developed among youth in the fisheries sector.

“I am urging Cameroonians that are in the diaspora who wire transfers and invest their money in hotels and apartments to come back and re-think about investing in agriculture and rural development,” Taiga added.

Taiga’s words were corroborated by Ananga Messina Clémentine, Cameroonian minister in charge of rural development. Clémentine forecasted wealth creation generated from agri-business in an ambitious plan where over 5,000 youth are currently being trained in enterprise development. She said there is a ready market in the case of agro-commodities as Cameroon is surrounded by petroleum-producing countries.

“It is time we make agriculture attractive, train and sensitize all demographic groups despite gender so that they know it is profitable. They need to know issues related to market analysis, choices of where to sell their products and building entrepreneurship spirit,” she said.

Clémentine added that in order to make agro products and commodities competitive on the market, there was a need for improved value addition and use of information technology in search of diverse market accessibility. She also stressed that post-harvest losses, currently up to 40 percent, must be brought down to manageable levels, especially in crops such as cassava and cereals. She urged African women to be actively engaged in all those activities, as a part of employment of different jobs within the value chain.

Responding to a comment from the plenary on the effects of climate change on agriculture, Clémentine said that studies have shown that at least 300 hectares of forest are destroyed annually in the Congo basin as a result of bush furrowing, a cultivate and abandon form of farming. She suggested adoption of modern agriculture methods that are less damaging to the environment and to mainstream climate change in African interventions.

Philomena Chege, Deputy Director in the Ministry of Agriculture in Kenya, suggested that the time is up to also consider shifting from subsistence farming to mechanization to ensure high productivity and time management on the part of youth.

“There is preference for males over women when it comes to ownership of land which results in young women being marginalized. But also there are issues of startup capital for the youth as well which makes embarking on such initiatives a challenge in most cases,” she said on the sidelines of the meeting.

Koffi Amegbeto, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Senior Policy Officer from the Regional Office for Africa, told IPS that the kind of interventions his office is implementing include support for the formulation and implementation of policies, strategies and programmes that generate decent rural employment, especially for rural youth and women.

“Effective support has been provided to more than twenty countries in the biennium 2014-2015. In particular, FAO is assisting governments in the development of effective public private partnerships fostering youth inclusion in agriculture and in the design of youth-friendly and climate smart methodologies for technical and vocational education and training (e.g. Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools (JFFLS) methodology),” Amegbeto told IPS.

Thanks to the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund, he added, FAO launched multi-country programmes on youth employment in East and West Africa, while a third programme is geared towards supporting the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency’s Rural Futures Programme. The programme aims to promote decent rural youth employment and entrepreneurship in agriculture and agri-business in four countries: Benin, Cameroon, Malawi and Niger.

Secondly, FAO provides policy advice, capacity development and technical support to extend the application of international labour standards in rural areas.

“The main areas of focus have been child labour prevention in agriculture, and occupational safety and health. Four countries (Cambodia, Niger, Malawi, and Tanzania) were supported with programmes to prevent child labour in agriculture with important results in terms of increased awareness and strengthened institutional capacities to prevent child labour,” he said.

Third, FAO provides support to improve information systems and knowledge on decent rural employment at national, regional and global levels.

FAO’s work in the period 2014-2015 included putting in motion the Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme (YEAP) in Nigeria, accompanying the Ministry of Youth, Employment and the Promotion of Civic Values in Senegal in developing a national Rural Youth Employment Policy, conducting a youth-focused value chain assessment of the small ruminant value chain in Ethiopia, and entrepreneurship skills training for vulnerable youth in Mali and Zambia.

Elephants in a solar-powered holding pen in Malawi, which is carrying out a major translocation between conservation parks. Credit: Charles Mkoka/IPS

By Charles Mkoka
LILONGWE, Jul 20 2016 (IPS)

One of the world’s largest and most significant elephant translocations kicked off earlier this month within Liwonde National Park in southern Malawi.

Patricio Ndadzela, Malawi country director of African Parks, a non-profit conservation group based in South Africa that is leading the relocation, told IPS that so far, 10 bulls and 144 family groups of elephants have been successfully captured from the park and transported 300 kilometers by truck to their new home in the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in central Malawi.

A few decades ago, around 1,500 elephants roamed Malawi’s biggest wildlife reserve, but now only a few herds totaling about 100 remain. The park is poised to be revitalised and serve as a critical elephant sanctuary for populations nationwide.

Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve covers 1,800 square kms of Miombo woodlands and afro-montane forest along Chipata Mountain on the border with Ntchisi district. The relocation, which began on July 3, involves tranquilising the elephants by dart from a helicopter and loading them by crane onto trucks for the journey to Nkhotakota."It's a story of hope and survival. It is a story of possibility." -- Peter Fearnhead, CEO of African Parks

The World Wildlife Federation notes that elephants remain under severe threat from ivory poaching, habitat loss, and human-wildlife conflict. Since 1979, African elephants have lost over half of their natural range. Less than 20 percent of African elephant habitat is currently under formal protection.

Local engagement for a balanced ecosystem

But Malawi is setting an example for the rest of the continent in how to protect elephants with the full consent and assistance of local communities. Before embarking on this major translocation exercise, African Parks engaged peripheral communities after taking over the reserve in July last year from government. Zonal area committees were established at the traditional authority level. These are chiefs of jurisdiction in the four districts that border the reserve. The districts are Nkhota Kota, Mzimba, Ntchisi and Kasungu.

“We have had a good working partnership with African Parks, together with the local people. They are managing the reserve for 25 years.  So far a number of activities have been done in consultations with the local people,” says Malijani Kachombo, the Traditional Authority Mphonde in Nkhota Kota district.

“They then brought the issue of restocking endangered species so that we have a more balanced ecosystem. This promise that they made has now been fulfilled today. The translocation of 500 elephants is no more a promise but reality.”

The animals will be well secured now as a new fence is already under construction and communities have been given ownership of the reserve, said the chief.

Other animals were also relocated, including 23 zebras, 25 elands, 220 waterbuck, 284 impalas, 32 warthogs, 99 kudu, 200 sables and two collared black rhinos.

A special landing site

As part of their integration into the reserve, a special landing site for the animals was chosen that provided for basic needs. According to Samuel Kamoto, African Parks Manager for Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, the site was identified after confirming that it had adequate water, shelter and food for the animals.

More importantly, they considered the proximity of the landing site’s accessibility to the road, since the heavy trucks carrying the animals need to align the doors with the entrance of the holding pen.

“Elephants started arriving last night and we let them inside the holding pen so that they can rest and regroup as social beings and families. This enables the animals to settle down first other than just letting them out, which confuses them,” Kamoto told IPS.

Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Wildlife at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, John Kazembe, said that the move was a good option considering the fact that Liwonde National Park was relatively small. Overcrowding of elephant populations in Liwonde had led to the animals devouring large areas of vegetation and coming into conflict with local people.

“Elephant herds should be moved into the reserve at intervals so that the ecosystem is not overwhelmed by a one-off relocation,” Kazembe said.

Peter Fearnhead, Chief Executive Officer of African Parks, said “Most stories we hear about elephants in Africa are doom and gloom. This translocation of 500 elephants, which is a pivotal moment for Malawi who is emerging as a leader in African elephant conservation, is a story of hope and survival. It is a story of possibility.”

It’s hoped that this rich reserve, coupled with a good working partnership with the local populace, will enable the animals to resettle quickly.

The giant seven-week translocation is costing 1.6 million dollars, and has been made possible with support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the Wyss Foundation, the Wildcat Foundation, Donna and Marvin Schwartz, Dioraphte and the People’s Post Code Lottery.

A South African capture team has almost completed the translocation of a herd of elephants from the Phirilongwe forest reserve located in a communal management area in southern Malawi.

Adjusting the trunk of an anaesthetised elephant. The tip of the trunk has been amputated, most likely after being caught in a snare. Credit: IFAW

Forty-four elephants have now been removed from an area that has been the scene of a lengthy conflict between elephants and humans since the 1960s.

A total of 60 elephants in Phirilongwe are the remnants of a larger herd that historically roamed a wide area at the southern tip of Lake Malawi, but found their range reduced and divided due to encroachment by a rapidly-expanding human population.

Department of Parks and Wildlife and Wildlife (DNPW) director Leonard Sefu told IPS that human-elephant problem in Mangochi lakeshore district has been a contentious issue for the last three decades.

Sefu confirmed that close to $300,000 had been identified for the translocation exercise as part of the Eco-Tourism Development Project, which seeks to restock and relocate wildlife from communal land to protected areas.

Not enough room for everyone

An ecosystem utilisation study by the wildlife research unit based at the nearby Liwonde National Park on Phirilongwe reveals that there is continued pressure being exerted on the forest resources by human activities these include deforestation for wood energy, encroachment among other.

As is the case elsewhere in Africa, a growing human population has been steadily clearing new land for agriculture in the Phirilongwe forest, shrinking the elephants’ habitat and reducing food and shelter for the animals. The elephants are also being wire-snared and poisoned by poachers, according to DNPW staff.

In their search for food, the elephants have caused extensive damage to crops in the field, and raided granaries for stored maize. Joe Chinguwo, Parks and Wildlife Officer, in charge of Environmental Education at Lake Malawi National Park confirmed in an interview that 16 people have been killed by elephants since 2004.

Population pressure on the reserve seems irresistible. Wildlife researchers warn that the problem will continue as long as Phirilongwe elephants are surrounded by communal management land along the Mangochi-Monkey Bay strip at the southern tip of Lake Malawi.

The translocation exercise began smoothly enough on Jun. 8: “A group of nine elephants, including three young calves, have been successfully darted and tranquilised and are en route from Phirilongwe, just south of Lake Malawi to Majete Wildlife Reserve,” said Jason Bell-Leask, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) director for Southern Africa at the time.

The journey to their new home in the Majete game reserve, in the lower Shire Valley some 200 kilometers south away, took this first group some six hours.

Resistance to translocation

But the operation was then suspended. A group calling itself the Friends of Phirilongwe obtained a High Court injunction restraining IFAW and DNPW from moving the elephants, saying they wanted further study to determine the future of the elephants in the forest reserve.

“We are doing it for transparency reasons. We are demanding an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to determine what will happen to the forest once the elephants have been moved. Our concern is that there is going to be more tree-cutting and environmental degradation in the reserve once the elephants have been moved out. This is because what used to be a threat to people would not be there,” Friends’ member Ismail Khan told IPS.

There had been a long debate over removing the elephants from the region. A 2005 World Wildlife Fund for Nature paper examining options to end human-elephant conflict in Phirilongwe proposed the creation of a park in the area, saying that without the protection from the elephants, the forest will disappear within 20 years.

The WWF study, carried out in response to requests from traditional authorities in the area to find a solution to the human-animal conflict, proposed fencing off the elephants’ core habitat, and the eventual extension of Lake Malawi National Park and re-introduction of other wildlife species to permanently protect habitat while offering the people of the area alternative livelihoods connected to tourism.

The study also conceded that relocation of the elephants was an ecologically-sound option.

Increasing raids by marauding elephants resulted in the formation of a local task force committee in January 2007, comprising chiefs and others from the local community, and the translocation programme was endorsed.

Donors were duly found to pay for the move, and several elephants were collared – for easy detection and monitoring of their movements and distribution in readiness for translocation.

However, as late as March 2008, there were still prominent locals resisting the move and advocating keeping the elephants in the district to enhance tourism, arguing that in the long term this will bring jobs and development to the area.

In April 2008 traditional authorities again launched a complaint – this time directed to the president and cabinet – saying they wanted the elephants relocated. The court application by the Friends of Phirilongwe proved only a temporary setback, and translocation resumed on Jun. 18

Moving 60 elephants

Humphreys Nzima, a renowned Malawian conservationist and coordinator of the Malawi/Zambia Trans frontier Conservation Area, said that although there was potential value in maintaining the elephants in Phirilongwe forest area. The dangers from the elephants in the area were immediate, he says, while reaping benefits from retaining the herd in the area would require long-term development.

A growing population seems certain to continue to put pressure on the Phirilongwe forest reserve. The traditional chief of Namkumba summed up the view of the majority of local residents on the future of the elephants.

“We are surprised that those calling themselves ‘Friends of Phirilongwe’ are arguing over the habitat of the forest. We have lost human lives to elephant stampedes… [We have suffered the] loss of crops and property for quite some time now. The elephants must go to Majete now,” said the traditional chief of Namkumba.

IFAW’s Neil Greenwood reported that twenty-six more elephants were captured and safely moved to Majete once the court ruled translocation could continue.

“On Sunday we loaded a cow elephant of about 50 plus years old into the wake-up crate for her move down to the reserve, her sunken temples telling of a grand old lady who has seen it all. I felt a great sense of satisfaction and achievement in knowing that she will be able to spend her golden years in the safety of a protected area,” he wrote in his blog from the Malawi.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).