Small Scale Farmers to engage governments on agriculture budgeting

Small scale farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa will engage their government on budgeting processes. Small scale farmers wants to have greater voices in the agriculture budgeting processes. Also the farmers want their government to increase the budget to 10% of the total budget to agriculture.

The advocacy is under the banner – Agriculture Budgeting Campaign – ABC

The ABC campaign will take place from December 2009 to march 2010 by starting engagement with local members of parliament, in particular the committee of agriculture and rural development. After meeting MPs, farmers will engage the ministry of agriculture to pursue them to accord farmers’ rightful space in policy and budget making on the agriculture sector.

“For so long farmers have been out of the ring of budget making… you can’t achieve victory out of the playing fields… we need to engage and influence our governments so that the budgets reflects the need and aspiration of us the small scale farmers” said Mubanga Kasakula a farmer and chair person of ESAFF Zambia.

The first ESAFF member countries to engage policy makers on budgeting include Zambia (which have been engaging the government since 2008), Lesotho, Kenya, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.