EWB is Addressing Hunger
Reducing hunger is not about a hand-out but rather a hand-up. While food aid has been important in many African countries to provide vulnerable citizens with needed food, EWB believes it is not a sustainable solution to hunger. Our volunteers are addressing persistent hunger by working with farmers and small entrepreneurs to ensure that enough food is both available and affordable.
Agriculture
In many regions of Africa, rainfall is extremely limited. During the dry season, little to no rain falls. Farmers must rely on the rainy season, often short and interrupted by droughts, to grow enough food to feed their family for an entire year. Unlike in Canada, where farmers are able to water their fields using large-scale irrigation technologies, most farmers in Africa water their fields with only a bucket. EWB is working with small-scale farmers to create access to simple and affordable irrigation technologies—mainly the treadle pump.
One of these farmers is David Muungu who lives in Zambia.
David has farmed the same small plot of land for 12 years. After years of struggling to grow enough food and the deaths of two of his children during droughts, David saved enough money, about $80, to purchase a treadle pump. The treadle pump resembles a stairmaster, that when operated by someone stepping up and down on two peddles, draws water from a river or well and delivers it onto crops at a rate of 1L per second—much faster than a bucket!
Using the pump, David doubled his plot of land and quadrupled the amount of food produced in one year! He now grows more food than his family needs, and can sell the extra at a local market, bringing in enough money to send his kids to school.
Food Processing
Unlike in Canada where a flick of a switch can turn on a light, rural households in many parts of Africa do not have access to electricity. Since there is no electricity all food processing is done by women entirely by hand.
This can take hours each day.
Take cassava for instance, which looks like a long potato and is a staple in Ghana. Women peel them using a machete, a task which often takes a group of women 8 hours to complete. The next day the cassava is grated and put into sacks. The water is then squeezed out of the sacks by placing big rocks on them or using a manual press. (Cassava is a natural source of cyanide, so if the water is not squeezed out people will die from cyanide poisoning within a few years of eating it.)
Women then take the pressed cassava, called "gari", and fry it for about 6 hours. During this entire time they sit in extreme heat and inhale smoke. The fired gari is then placed in 80kg sacks and sold. The profits at the end of the day are slim.
EWB volunteers are creating access to an energy source in rural communities, called the multifunctional platform (MFP). The MFP is a small engine fueled by diesel, that powers various agricultural processing equipment such as a cassava grater. Using the MFP, these women can then speed up the process of making gari, increasing their production and giving them time to invest in other money-generating activities.
For more information about EWB's food projects, read about our work overseas.
