JEEP: promoting home gardening in Kinshasa, Zaire

Kabeya Mpoyi and J. Paulus SJ
Projet Jardins et Elevages de Parcelle, Kinshasa XI, Zaire

Introduction

The principles of ecodevelopment can help resource-poor people take charge of their own destiny. The project 'Jardins et Elevages de Parcelle' (JEEP) is an example of the implementation of these principles. The project, established in 1989, aims to assist people at the grassroots level to achieve significant agricultural production at home through the use of the home plot environment and available local resources.

The main objective of the project is to contribute to the health of the target people by enhancing food security and to thereby initiate a process of integrated sustainable development. The strategy is to provide the target people with an appropriate tool for agricultural production. They can then use their food products for family consumption and sell the surplus to buy other complementary food products. This is expected to have beneficial effects on health. The target people are everyone living in a residential plot within the project range of action and willing to participate. Owing to the present difficult situation in Zaire, particular attention is paid to the poorest families and those with malnourished children. The range of action of the project includes the areas of Kinshasa served by the 'Santé pour tous' Project. In each of the zones defined by this project, a health centre is chosen for demonstrations of project activities aiming to control malnutrition. In 1995, JEEP operated in the following health zones: Binza, Kimbaseke, Kingabwa, Kingasani, Kisenso, Kintambo, Kitokimosi, Makelele, Malebo, Masina, Mont Amba, Mont Ngafula, N'djili and Ngaba. Forty-one health centres were covered in these 14 health zones.

Project organization

To carry out its initiatives in the field, the project has four categories of employees, most of them working on a part-time basis: project staff, monitoring agents, extension agents and auxiliaries.

The project staff consists of six people: the Director, four supervisors and an administrative secretary. It is the management body of the project. Its functions are to elaborate and direct project activities, including making field visits to follow and supervise the activities conducted by monitoring and extension agents. Project staff make assessments of progress along with the agents and re-direct actions as necessary. They also train agents regularly as necessitated by any problems arising in the field.

The monitoring agents:

· undertake surveys of the urban plots

· counsel and train the people using urban plots who express an interest in gardening, growing high-yielding fruit trees and small-animal husbandry

· manage the support provided by JEEP to the inhabitants of plots who express the need

· undertake the distribution of seed of the leaf vegetable called kikalakasa in Lingala (Psophocarpus scandens)

· inform and train people in plot agriculture and ecodevelopment

· direct populations toward health centres and other basic sanitary services

· stimulate a cooperative spirit within the communities and also the emergence of self-help associations.

· are in charge of the extension of kikalakasa along with other gardening activities
· encourage growing of high-yielding fruit trees
· direct populations toward health centres and other basic sanitary services.

Activities conducted in 1995

The main activities conducted by the project are:

· training in food production
· support of production
· training in gardening, small-animal husbandry and nutrition
· surveys of other cities of the country, with a view to extending the range of action of the project
· publications and other public awareness materials
· upstream research and development.

In health centres. Demonstration sessions were held in health centres. The target people were families bringing along children for nutritional rehabilitation. We call these families 'MSF families', MSF standing for Médecins Sans Frontières. There were demonstrations of the preparation of kikalakasa. Gardening, fruticulture and small-animal husbandry practices were explained. At present, a kikalakasa plot, a demonstration food garden and sometimes a young high-yielding fruit tree can be found in about 40 centres.

In home plots. The home visits helped to intensify dissemination of information and extension of agricultural practices. The main target group was MSF families and their neighbours, but other families also were visited.

Kikalakasa production. Of a total of 6896 plots visited, 90% agreed to grow the vegetable, 63% actually produced something and 26% achieved significant production by maintaining at least five plants of kikalakasa. The rates of acceptance and production of kikalakasa were lower in MSF families than in other families. However, the rates of success were approximately the same.

Gardening production. Of a total of 5429 families visited, 82% agreed to start a garden, 60% achieved some production and 32% succeeded in planting over 40 m², or at least half of the space available in the plot. Rates of success were similar for MSF and non-MSF families.

Animal husbandry. Rates of success of small-animal husbandry (measured as an increase in livestock) were generally low, especially among MSF families and in non-sharecropping systems.

Fruit trees. Selected, grafted fruit trees were distributed. Of the 186 families visited, 70% agreed to plant a tree and 14% succeeded in maintaining a growing tree. Almost all the trees were sold in health centres frequently visited by MSF families, which may explain why the rate of acceptance of the practice (though not success) was slightly higher for these families than for non-MSF families.

Comments. In general, kikalakasa cropping and gardening were more acceptable and successful than small-animal husbandry in the urban plot environment. Cropping of selected and grafted fruit trees is not yet fully understood by the target people. These people already have ordinary old trees in their plots and moreover the selected material is relatively expensive and difficult to find. An MSF family, encouraged by training, can do as well as other families.

Support initiatives

A stand to sell vegetable seeds was established in each of about 40 health centres. A hire-purchase stand of agricultural tools was installed in 16 centres. In the plots, support was provided to 161 families of the 291 having accepted to become sharecroppers. This is because the training of beneficiaries is necessary before the sharecropping arrangement can commence.

Training initiatives

Project agents took advantage of regular training throughout the year on technical themes to be disseminated through extension. These training sessions were held every 15 days.

Voluntary 'focal points' of health areas. All 82 (2 per health area) voluntary focal points participated in daily sessions for training and for self-assessment of their activities. They will progressively take over the training activities of the project.

Target people. Every project worker organized, every 15 days or so, awareness sessions for MSF families and others at each of the 40 health centres. The regular home visits of project workers and focal points (again every 15 days) also helped to increase the know-how of target people.

Trainees. In 1995, ten people nominated by their respective institutions were trained in the activities of the project. The Institut supérieur agro-vétérinaire de Kimwenza entrusted to JEEP the practical training of 38 of its students in the extension of kikalakasa cropping.

Project expansion

In view of the enthusiasm of associations and NGOs for JEEP activities, it has been decided to try to expand the project. Since the establishment of the project, favourable comments have reached JEEP from many parts of Zaire. With the financial support of Cooperation Beige, 13 cities of Zaire were surveyed. These reconnaissance missions aimed at studying the local feasibility of urban agricultural activities of the type implemented by JEEP in Kinshasa. The following cities were visited: Bukavu, Goma, Kindu, Kisangani, Kisantu, Mbaza-Ngungu, Mbuji-Mayi, Kananga, Boma, Matadi, Kasongo-Lunda, Kikwit and Mbandaka. The conclusions were in favour of the establishment of a national network of JEEP activities.

Public awareness materials

Various publications helped the JEEP message to reach a wider public:

· the Verbum Bible Zaire calendar for 1995 has, on the back of every sheet, extension-type texts on agriculture and animal husbandry prepared by the JEEP project

· a strip cartoon on the benefits of eating kikalakasa leaves and modes of cropping and preparation was published by Filles de St Paul, Zaire in collaboration with JEEP

· advertising material such as tee-shirts and stickers were produced.

Collaboration with other projects

JEEP maintains strong relations with about ten research and development projects capitalizing on the same urban ecodevelopment principles. These are:

1. PLAM (Plantes Anti Malariennes): verification of indigenous knowledge of the antimalarial properties of various plants

2. Cropping of tropical edible mushrooms on woody substrata

3. Domestication of an edible rodent for human consumption

4. Rearing of African Giant Snails for human consumption

5. Earthworm rearing for poultry consumption

6. Ethnozoological studies of frogs with a view to rearing for human consumption

7. Production of fast-growing fodder trees and of the fruit trees 'mvuazi' and 'kisantu'

8. Propagation of breadfruit by root cuttings, layering and in vitro

9. Collecting and preliminary trials of insecticidal plants

10. Mycorrhiza project.

· Street afforestation with fodder trees by street committees
· Bread-making from maize, cassava, sorghum and breadfruit.

Results

The results obtained by the JEEP can be discussed under a number of different headings.

Adoption of home-based agricultural production systems

Of 6235 families monitored, 4339 (70%) grew and used kikalakasa to some extent in 1995. Of 4433 plots, 3244 (73%) now include a productive home garden. As of 1995, about 70% of families visited and trained have effectively accepted that there are benefits in adopting one of the production systems proposed by JEEP.

Ability to produce

Some 30% of project families have succeeded in producing at least five good plants of kikalakasa and 40% succeeded in producing different vegetables in their home gardens.

Food security

During the recent crisis in the country, a good meal become increasingly difficult to procure. There were families who could secure, and with uncertainty, only one meal every 2 days. JEEP activities helped to secure a certain frequency of meals. Families which succeeded with kikalakasa or with gardening could count on two sure meals with kikalakasa and three sure meals with other vegetables a week. Thus, families practising both kikalakasa. cropping and gardening could secure a minimum of five vegetable meals a week. This represents a real improvement for resource-poor families.

Health

The vegetables recommended by the project, in particular kikalakasa, are generally protein-rich. Thus, given the meal frequencies quoted above, they necessarily improve the nutrition and therefore the health of the family.

Recovery of malnourished children

For MSF families living in the project range of action and monitored for gardening, no case of relapse of a rehabilitated malnourished child was brought to our attention. However, it should be noted that nutritional recovery was not only due to gardening and that some children died before rehabilitation.

Conclusion

In view of the results observed, we can conclude that the kinds of activities undertaken by JEEP are an effective means, within reach of the poorest, to escape from the cycle of food insufficiency. JEEP activities on their own cannot eradicate malnutrition, but they can reduce its extent. There is a real grassroots interest in these activities. People are interested in practising gardening and small-animal husbandry in their urban home plots, given training and public awareness services. It was observed that, for 1995, more than 30% of the families visited have improved the quantity and quality of their weekly menu because of the acquisition of know-how, instead of a free distribution of food. This know-how remains among the populations and has a chance to be transmitted from generation to generation. This is surely the key to a sustainable development in which people take charge of themselves.

Acknowledgements

The European Union, UNDP, MSF, UNICEF, The Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives, Misereor, Santé Pour Tous and the University of Kinshasa provided financial, material and moral support.