Cunene: The Family Farming and Marketing - Additional Fund (SAMAP-FA) project will provide technical assistance to 114,000 farming families from nine provinces until 2029.
According to Angola Press News Agency, the information was disclosed on Tuesday in the province of Cunene by Miguel Pereira, the National Coordinator of SAMAP, during a seminar presenting the aforementioned project.
The project aims to cover the provinces of Bengo, Zaire, Uige, Cuanza-Norte, Cuanza-Sul, Benguela, Huila, Namibe, and Cunene. Addressing government members and partners at the seminar, the coordinator revealed that the project, financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Angolan government, has a budget of 29.5 million US dollars.
The project plans to establish 3,246 agricultural field schools to consolidate them. Cunene urgently needs to empower small producers due to its specific characteristics and the infrastructure investments implemented in the province, such as the Cafu Canal. 'The intention is that, within the next two or three years, we will have peasant families with a high degree of productivity to ensure food self-sufficiency, with any surplus being marketed,' Pereira said.
Elizabeth Aurora, director of the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries in Cunene, praised the implementation of the project, which aims to strengthen the productive capacity of peasant families and guarantee food and nutritional security. For the current agricultural season in Cunene, 302,572 hectares of arable land are being prepared, with a projected harvest of 271,369 tons of various products compared to 278,683 tons in the previous season.
The National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics (INAMET) predicts below-normal rainfall for Cunene, ranging from 250 to 400 millimeters.
