For more than a decade, Felister Myovela and her fellows in their farming group in Southern Tanzania were struggling to irrigate their small farms. In the region where Felister is living most farmers are engaged in subsistence agriculture which is performed under the constraints of poor infrastructure with rudimentary tools including using fossil fuels.
Felister is a leader of a 20-women-only farming group that is engaged in small scale-farming mostly producing vegetables in their small farms of around half an acre each.
To irrigate half an acre, it would take each farmer at least two days with the majority using buckets as their best irrigation method. Majorities of farmers in Tanzania like Felister and colleagues do not have enough money to purchase mechanized tools like modern pumps despite agriculture contributing to more than a quarter of the East African economy at 26.5 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product as of 2020.
The National Sample Census of Agriculture 2019/20 shows that the majority of small-scale farmers are using traditional methods of farming with approximately 2 households in every 100 (1.8 percent) surveyed using water pumps while only 1.6 percent use sprinklers with poverty contributing largely to the situation.
Despite their region having friendly weather for agriculture with two rainfall seasons annually, regular drought has created more burden on these farmers who depends on agriculture as their main economic activity.
Felister (35) said most of her group members who own farms in dry lands failed to manage even half an acre because irrigating such plots was “more than a punishment.”
“We used to wake up early in the morning around 5:00, fetch water from a well dug in a certain corner of the farm and carry by hands or heads and irrigate the whole piece of land,” Felister said.
After all the pains, her group which is based in Lupembe village in the Iringa region is now getting relief, thanks to a solar-powered mobile pump that has helped them irrigate their farms faster and more effectively.
The solar-powered mobile pump is an innovative farming product developed by a local renewable energy organization, ELICO Foundation which in the last three years has been investing in solutions to improve the lives of the majority who are energy vulnerable citizens including farmers and petty traders. The product has accompanied by a business and operational model which aims to match the financial capacity and the environment which beneficiaries are operating.
In this pump, solar panels are installed in simply made two-wheeled or three-wheeled handcarts fitted with an electric pump that push water from the water source to the farm for irrigation.
