Farming rescues Lower Juba IDPs from poverty

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Saturday August 5, 2023

File photo/Ergo

Dispossessed pastoralist Abdisalam Omar Abdi is happy to have become self-sufficient after harvesting 27 sacks of various crops including beans, maize and tomatoes from his new three-hectare farm in Afmadow, Lower Juba.

He sold off 14 sacks of food and kept the rest for his wife and six children. He earned 8.9 million Somali shillings ($370) from the sales and has been able to turn his life around after a miserable year living in a camp for displaced people.

“There has been a huge difference in our life. We were trying to get education for the children, and pay our bills and food, and we have got all that through the farm,” he said.

In July, his three elder children were enrolled in school for the first time in Afmadow. He paid $15 for their registration and they are set to start their classes in August. He was also able to pay off $150 debt that he took before harvesting.

Abdisalam is among 300 displaced families given farmland by the Afmadow administration. Although he was not formerly a farmer, he quickly picked up the skills from farming neighbours.

He planted in March, when the Gu rainfall was starting in his area. He received $70 cash aid in February from Jubba Foundation and used $50 to buy seeds.

“If you hear someone say they don’t know how to do something, it means they don’t need it. If you have children and you’re faced with hardship, you will do anything!” he said, reflecting on his new livelihood.

Abdisalam said they were living in a dire situation Abaqbanbow IDP camp in Afmadow, receiving little and irregular food aid from the UN’s World Food Programme, WFP. They were pastoralists in the rural areas of Afmadow but lost 40 cows to prolonged drought and water shortage and moved to the displacement camp mid-last year.

“When I arrived here, we were pastoralists who had lost our livestock. But our situation has changed, we have been through a difficult situation, sometimes we would get food and sometimes we would miss out,” he said.

Abdirahman Mukhtar Mohamed, another farmer with an eight hectare farm, has produced 40 sacks of beans, maize and sorghum, as well as 100 watermelons and 12 buckets of tomatoes.

He made 15 million shillings ($577) from sales and saved 25 sacks of grains including maize, beans and sorghum for family consumption. He harvested the first produce in June.

“Electricity was a challenge, but now we’ve got electricity and we’re able to pay for it. We can afford to go to Kismayo and have an appointment with a doctor. The things we needed but couldn’t get due to finances are now a possibility,” he said.

Abdirahman has put six of his eight children in a school, where the other two have been given bursaries.

He was also living in Abaqbanbow camp and before turning to farming was a construction worker making about 100,000 shilling ($3.8) a day whenever he found jobs.

“It was possible that we sometimes didn’t cook food the whole day. Our life has changed completely, we now invite people and we give them food,” said Abdirahman, who is proud of their new situation.

He and his family were displaced from Bilis-qoqani, 30 kilometres from Afmadow. He lost 120 cows and 60 goats at the height of the drought in 2021.

The coordinator of Jubaland state’s agriculture ministry, Mohamed Khalif Hassan, said the ministry and the local authority had worked together to award the farmland to the families, aiming to stave off poverty and dependency on aid handouts.

He also noted that families were selected based on their circumstances. Large families, single parent families, and those living with disabilities were given priority over other displaced families in Afmadow.

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