The Sunday News
A BINGA-BASED non-governmental organisation, Zubo, has ventured into a fish farming project which is set to benefit dozens of local women in the area.
In an interview with Sunday Business in Binga last week, Zubo coordinator Mrs Rosemary Cumanzala, said they were targeting to construct five fishing ponds each at a cost of $6 000 before handing them to a group of local women in the area to run.
She said initially the women were into Kapenta fish harvesting business in Lake Kariba but decided to diversify into a more sustainable fish farming project.
“The group of women is running a Kapenta fish harvesting project and we want to take economic empowerment to greater heights by venturing into fish farming,” said Mrs Cumanzala.
She said the process to venture into the fish farming project started long ago and most of the ground work had already been done.
“We have already pegged the area the ponds will be and soon we will start digging. We hope by end of July some of the ponds will be finished. In August and September, we are hoping to start stocking because the ideal time is after winter,” said the Zubo official adding fingerlings would be bought from Kariba.
She added that they got approval from the Environment Management Agency (EMA) to start constructing the ponds.
“We have gone through all the procedures and EMA has granted us the go-ahead to construct the ponds,” said the official.
She said the women who are going to run the fish ponds were already trained by experts from Aquaculture Zimbabwe.
Mrs Cumanzala added that fish was in high demand in the country and suppliers were failing to satisfy the market.
“Fish is on high demand and most people want fish because it is good and healthy. The price of fish is high because the supply is low. We did a market survey and we have already identified possible markets. We got markets from Bulawayo, Victoria falls and many other places,” said the official.
Zubo board chairperson, Mrs Danisa Mudimba, said through support from UN Women and Fund for Gender Equality, the organization had contributed significantly to women empowerment in Binga.
“Through support from UN Women, Zubo has contributed significantly to women empowerment through its different projects in Binga. To date, the organisation has reached more than 3 500 women and 150 men as direct beneficiaries. Zubo believes that women’s access to resources is one element of empowerment and therefore critical for the attainment of Millennium Development Goal 3 on gender equality and empowerment of women,” said Mrs Mudimba.
She said they were making efforts to ensure more women in Binga ventured into self-sustaining projects this year.
“Our 2013 and 2014 economic empowerment project aims at increasing the capacity of rural women on sustainable utilisation of natural resources, strengthening regional and international markets for rural women’s products and increasing rural women’s income,” she said.
