The Takahashis: Junji and Evelyn

Focus on Zambia

September 2006(excerpt from JICA website)

Villagers in the tiny hamlet of Mwalongo had reason to be well satisfied, at least for now. For centuries they and their ancestors have lived on the very edge of survival, growing meager crops of maize in the windswept landscape and always subject to the vagaries of a harsh climate, drought, pestilence, and famine.

But help has begun to arrive for the residents of Mwalongo, who are among the more than 70% of Zambia's population of around 11.5 million who live in isolated and arid or semi-arid regions. As JICA increases its developmental focus on the African continent, a major emphasis has been placed on projects designed to help the inhabitants in these areas to escape the poverty trap in which they have lived all of their lives.

Mwalongo is in Zambia's Chongwe District and, since 2002, Japanese experts and Zambian colleagues from the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives have been working there and in some 30 other nearby villages on a program called The Project for Participatory Village Development in Isolated Areas.

Mwalongo is reached along a rutted, twisting dirt track which becomes impassable during the rainy season, when the village is isolated from the outside world. There is constant dust or mud, low scrub and stumpy trees, but the region is luckier than other surrounding areas because two small rivers flow nearby. It is not even a village in the traditional sense, but a series of isolated, mud brick homes scattered across a huge area.

Asian-African Differences

For the first time, this village has been able to buy cows and other animals on a collective basis to boost their standard of living.

When Junji Takahashi, the chief advisor to the project who supervises four other Japanese experts, arrived, that was the first thing he noticed. "In Asia, village houses are packed closely together," the Yokohama native said. "Here, houses can be kilometers from each other and ‘neighbors' may not even meet except at weddings and funerals." And, he added: "In Asia there is always rain, and always at least some food. Here, in the dry season, there is nothing. Nothing."

In Mwalongo, villagers have bought small numbers of pigs, goats, and cattle to help generate both food and cash. In the past villagers used to water small, individual plots with buckets of water hauled laboriously by hand from the nearby rivers. Now, simple pumps and pipes irrigate a growing area of old and newly introduced crops. A storage shed and brick water-storage tanks are being built.

In exchange for the infusion of some $16,000 dollars and the agricultural expertise, villagers are expected to do virtually all of the actual work themselves and on a communal rather than an individual basis.

The results thus far may appear laughably modest to more sophisticated town and city dwellers, but to villagers who have had almost nothing for their entire lives, a few animals or an extra crop can make a significant difference in their lives.

It is already planned that Phase II of the Chongwe project will begin in 2007, and a similar program is being launched this year in the northern part of the country covering an additional 15 villages and 10,000 people.

Junji Takahashi cautioned that such projects offer "no quick fix" to eradicate poverty. "There are no instant results. Community development is extremely difficult and slow."