Amie is a farmer in the Brefet Community Garden in the West Coast region of The Gambia, which is part of United Purpose’s NEMA Horticulture project.

Amie used to work hard on her vegetable garden with little reward. The unfenced vegetables were often eaten by roaming animals, leaving her with limited income to support her family of seven children.

Since the NEMA Horticulture project began, Amie has been able to spend less time working for a far greater reward. Through the project, fences have been built around the garden, protecting the vegetables from livestock and allowing Amie and her fellow farmers to expand their garden further. Solar-powered boreholes have also been constructed. This easy access to water means it is now more feasible to maintain the larger garden - and Amie and her family can also safely drink the water, too.

The project has also linked Amie’s garden with UP’s bio-fortification project. As a result, she now has access to highly nutritious bio-fortified seeds, including orange sweet potato. This has improved the health of not only Amie and her children, but also all the mothers and young children in her community. Amie can visibly see how all the children in her community are now a healthy weight and developing well as a result.

Training via the NEMA Horticulture project has equipped Amie with knowledge on the importance of organic farming. Before the project, the women used unhealthy artificial fertiliser, which came at great financial and environmental cost. Now, Amie and her fellow farmers know how to make compost from readily available materials, including animal waste, ensuring their plants grow quickly and are free from harmful chemicals.

Amie’s garden has now expanded from 1.5 hectares to more than five, giving her a larger income to keep her seven children well-fed, healthy, and in school.

Context:

NEMA Horticulture is one of the projects that United Purpose implement as part of its strategic partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture in the Gambia. The project trains farmers (predominantly women) on improving their yields and getting fair prices for them at the market. They are taught the importance of proper vegetable spacing, the best time for watering, how to make organic compost, how to make organic pest repellent and other ways to protect their vegetables. The project also funded solar powered boreholes for easy watering, a gravel road, an onion store, toilets and vegetable crates.

Baluu Tim Maring-Ngo (BTM), which means biofortification in the Mandinka language, is an EU-funded project that complements the NEMA Horticulture project by focusing on nutrition. In this project mothers’ groups are set up to improve mother and under-5 nutrition by encouraging, amongst other things, the growing and eating of more nutritious vegetables. These include orange flesh sweet potato (the less nutritious white flesh sweet potato is widely eaten in West Africa), Pearl Millet (as opposed to the normal millet that is usually grown) and green leafy vegetables.