The intervention

The overall vision of this project is smallholder farmers having political influence and ability to do viable agri-business in Lesotho. The outcome of the project will be a Lesotho Agriculture and Food Forum (LAFF) building smallholder farmers’ social capital alongside doing incisive lobbying and advocacy towards the Government of Lesotho for them to provide the necessary infrastructure and enabling environments in the rural areas of Lesotho.

 

The lessons learned from previous DLN-RSDA-projects have led to the development of the project at hand, where the focus will be on partnerships at all levels. Working together with likeminded organisations, building social capital and providing the necessary infrastructure will allow smallholder farmers’ organisations and forums to both speak with one strong voice and at the same time together aggregate the volumes and the quality produce required by commercial buyers. The proposed project will maximize the outcome of previous projects by synchronising with other interventions across rural areas all over Lesotho so that RSDA and likeminded stakeholders will reach more beneficiaries within the target group.

This project will be decentralising and at the same time densifying the role of RSDA as a leading initiator, coordinator, and facilitator of joint efforts. The joint effort between RSDA and likeminded organisations will be assisting smallholder farmers across all of Lesotho to organise and carry out own advocacy initiatives and lobbying duty bearers at all levels and contexts.

Most of all this project will organise smallholder farmers from all 10 districts of Lesotho and the number of smallholder farmers organised will increase from 5.000 to 10.000.