00:00Pingiwa Musende trained as a nurse, but delays in securing a job placement
00:05led her to explore farming, a field traditionally dominated by men in Zambia.
00:12What began as her small vegetable garden is now a thriving farm.
00:17I bought a hosepipe. I remember some sprinklers and some seeds.
00:23And we planted about maybe just a small field of maybe 50 by 50.
00:30And at first it did well and women would come on the farmers.
00:33They check on the chickens. They would come to the field and order some vegetables.
00:37And I grew interest in horticulture from there.
00:40The challenge we're facing right now is water.
00:43Water, as you can see here where we are farming, it's quite a big space.
00:48But we are only able to irrigate a certain portion because we do not have enough water
00:54hielding from the boho that we have currently.
00:58Musende's husband, Simon Walia, co-founded the farm and works alongside her.
01:04He says supporting her dream has transformed their lives.
01:09As time went by, the communication between the two of us and the love that we had for each other,
01:19we started doing pretty well.
01:22We started doing pretty well and we've been doing amazing together.
01:25Andrew Majila, who farms near Lusaka, left his job as a store manager and supervisor at an export company.
01:35He felt that his salary didn't match his efforts and went into farming full time.
01:41Initially, I started with keeping broiler chickens, of which I managed and I was successive with that.
01:48And after managing that, I was able to build more pot trees.
01:52And that's how now I also decided, so okay, I can also start doing horticultural crops.
01:57At first, there was nothing, literally nothing here at the farm.
02:00But as you can see, I have, there's a house there, there are some pot trees and there's also some development that are going on here at the garden.
02:08So at least I've managed also to settle my debts that I had through farming.
02:14And I'm proud to say I'm on the right track.
02:18The youth has had little incentive to enter the agricultural sector, where over 60% of farmers operate on a small scale with limited access to markets and technology.
02:31But Musende and Machila are helping to change the narrative, using irrigation systems and social media to expand their reach and create jobs.
02:45As you can see, we are now harvesting beetroot at SP Farms.
02:50My specialty is farming.
02:52And when I started work here, I advised my boss to buy all the necessary equipment for successful farming.
02:59And now, I am very happy working here, because the farm has yielded results, and we work as a team.
03:12Farming is very good and keeps me going when we harvest the crops and sell the produce.
03:17If we don't farm, then there is no food for people.
03:21Farming is very good and keeps me going when we harvest the crops, and I hope to see the government invest more in mechanization to empower more youth through agriculture.
03:34For more information, let's go after I pick up kalo давай.
03:36Rear Soba
