May 2016

Hello subscriber subscriber,

Entrepreneurs in the water sector are soon getting extra attention from Jacana.

Did you know that

• 89% of all employed Zambians are in informal employment. Meaning they are in jobs or self employed without any kind of registration (like: Chamber of Commerce, Tax, Workers insurance or Pension scheme). In other words they depend on or work for small entrepreneurs. In rural areas, the informal employment rate is 96% (zamstats.gov.zm).

• more than 5 million people (35%) in Zambia do not have access to an improved water source (rural areas 49%) and more than 6 million people (41%) have no access to improved sanitation (rural areas 56%) (JMP 2015).

• not a drop of rain falls on Zambia soil for half of the year and that it is impossible to farm any crops or vegetables during the dry season if you don't have access to water.

• El Niño also affects parts of Zambia.

• that small scale farmers can earn more money when they can grow vegetables outside the rainy season, with other words when they have access to water throughout the year.

Water for entrepreneurs &

Entrepreneurs for water

Jacana keeps on guiding small scale entrepreneurs as you’re used to. For the entrepreneurs who earn money with water, Jacana creates extra opportunities.

• Jacana starts this year a SMART training centre where Zambian small scale entrepreneurs will be trained and guided in production, reparation and selling of Simple, Market based, Affordable, Repairable Technologies (SMART), like hand pumps and manually drilled boreholes. Next to general business training, the "entrepreneurs for water" also get technical training and guidance.

• Besides that Jacana will train and guide entrepreneurs who use water (from these SMARTechnology) to generate income. For example: water vendors, car washers, restaurant owners, cattle keepers and we expect a lot of small scale farmers. They get guidance in general entrepreneurial skills and in their discipline.

Jacana uses the experience from Tanzania and Jacana is member of the SMART Centre Group.

Want to know more? Visit: http://www.smartcentrezambia.com

Where

To find the best location for the SMART training centre, Jacana sent a team of researcher to five provinces. That survey resulted in the choice of Eastern Province of Zambia, town Chipata.

We choose Chipata, because:

• Chipata has enough small scale entrepreneurs who can use our support.

• the small scale farmers in the Eastern part of Zambia are relying on the rainfall and because of lack of water they only can cultivate their land between 100 to 140 days in a year (yieldgab.org 2016).

• The soil structure and landscape of Chipata and surrounding is diverse and suitable for training of different types of SMARTechnologies.

• The economic situation in and around Chipata is diverse as well, that is why we can support poor people with for example water supply for their businesses and the middle class can buy locally produced pumps direct from the trained entrepreneurs (Self Supply).

"Dry" entrepreneurs

Of cause we also continue supporting entrepreneurs who do not depend on water. Joel, for example, was just added to our list. He collects solid waste in the capital Lusaka. Joel has more customers than his small truck can handle and wants to go into recycling as well. But Joel can explain it better to you (in his video):

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