ZATAC Attack! - Introduction

Working with Engineers Without Borders, one might expect me to be designing solar ovens or installing wells or developing new technology for Zambia’s development. But that’s not how we roll.

We focus on building the capacity of local organizations. This essentially means that we help organizations who are already on the ground do their jobs better. In my case, EWB has partnered with the Zambia Agribusiness Technical Assistance Centre Ltd., a legally registered, independent, non-profit Zambian private organization. It may seem to be a misnomer that ZATAC is both a private organization and non-profit, but this is in fact the case. ZATAC doesn’t have shareholders who take in the company’s profits as a typical private company would, but it has guarantors who oversee the organization, but do not take any financial gain from their involvement - all profits go straight back into the company. It essentially runs like an NGO (non-government organization) would, with the vast majority of its support coming from USAID (United States Agency for International Development).

Here’s the official missions statement. If you’re interested in more detail, you can check out their web site at www.zatac.org.

“The primary objective of ZATAC Ltd. is to help increase income and improve quality of life of rural Zambians through alliances built between Agribusinesses and rural enterprises (primarily owned and operated by smallholders) that buy from and/or sell to small producers. In pursuing this objective ZATAC Ltd. provides technical and managerial services to its clients. Further, in keeping with the mission objective ZATAC Ltd. follows a strategic path to self-sufficiency, success and sustainability.”

In a nutshell, we want to help farmers make money. We are helping to develop their abilities to compete as businesspeople - to help farmers who have been farming only for subsistence develop their farm into a profitable long-term business. This process is called commercialization.

One of ZATAC’s current projects is called the Copperbelt Outgrower Initiative, which targets small-scale farmers (aka smallholders) in the Copperbelt province for commercialization. Instead of working with individual farmers, though, we work with farmer’s cooperatives, which are associations formed by farmers within a specific region or town. They purchase inputs (seed, fertilizer, etc.) together, sell their crop together and essentially perform efficiently as a unit as opposed to many individuals. A farmer’s cooperative is a business.

ZATAC uses a market-driven approach to farmer commercialization. They have targeted established markets either in Zambia or through exporters. We then link our farmers to these markets and provide technical support to ensure that the farmers are producing products with high yields (amount of crop per area farmed) and high quality. We supply them with farming inputs such as seed and medicines on a credit basis, which they pay back as they bring in profits from their sales. We train farmers in agricultural production, business and marketing skills, and HIV/AIDS mitigation. We are currently focusing on coffee, Tabasco chillies and organic honey.

Out office is fairly small, located in Kitwe, which is Zambia’s second biggest city and the economic hub of the Copperbelt. We have a manager, two field officers, one office administrator a caretaker and a driver. I am essentially working as a field officer to support the implementation of ZATAC’s projects. My goal is to help build the capacity of ZATAC as an organization, which essentially means that I’m here to help them do their job better by bringing in an outsider’s perspective and help them target areas of improvement.

I’m still very much getting my feet wet. I spend a lot of time playing in dirt right now, getting a sense for the work that the people we work to support (i.e. farmers) are doing. I have recently taken that one step further by moving to a village for a week. I stayed with one of our farmers with the goal of gaining a better understanding of rural livelihoods and get a better perspective of the challenges that our farmers are facing. I kept a diary during my stay and will be posting these journals shortly. Stay tuned!

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