Programme director
The Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Mr
Gugile Nkwinti
The Minister of Economic Development, Mr Ebrahim Patel
The Premier of the province of KwaZulu-Natal, Dr Zweli
Mkhize
The MEC for Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Land
Reform, Ms Lydia Johnson
Your worships, the mayors
Amakhosi present
Non-Governmental Organisations in the rural development
Sector
Development specialists
Academics
Representatives of various tiers of government
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
It is indeed our pleasure as the province of KwaZulu-Natal to host this very important interactive session whose ultimate aim is to ensure that all of us, sharing the same future, are able share ideas on our country’s trajectory with regards to rural development.
History has contrived to put us at a critical position in the evolution of our country, a position where we actively determine the route that our country’s transformation agenda has to follow with regards to rural development. This is an opportunity which, I we have no doubt, we will grasp with both hands and ensure that we good use of.
Our province moves from a premise that there can be no sustainable development without sustained and long-term rural development. Sustained rural development is a prerequisite for the growth and reconstruction of our country.
The recent Economic Recovery and Jobs Summit of August 2009 took a decision to develop strategies to resuscitate KwaZulu-Natal ailing economy by selecting key economic sectors that have a potential of upturning economy in the province.
Amongst other prioritised sectors were agribusiness and forestry, wood and wood, pulp and paper. Agribusiness and forestry, pulp and paper and furniture are all significant catalysts to the sustainable rural economic development.
Agriculture and forestry related activity generates 77 percent of the primary sector output in KwaZulu-Natal. Nationally, primary forestry and forest products contribute about 5.62 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP increased from 4.5 in 1980 to 9.1 in 2004. The contribution of forestry sector nationally and in KwaZulu-Natal has been driven by following indicators:
Since 2007 forestry industry has contributed about 34 700 direct jobs in KwaZulu-Natal, 29 300 in Mpumalanga, 10 300 in Cape and 2 700 in Limpompo.
In 2007 value of sales from primary processing plants indicated that pulp generated about 53.2 percent, chips 10.3 percent, lumber 17.4 percent, panels 12.9 percent, mining timber 1.2 percent and others 4.9 percent which totalled to R18.5 billion.
Exporting in forestry increased from R4.6 billion in 1996 to R12.2 billion in
2007. Land Use in KwaZulu-Natal is distributed into the following fields: grazing has taken most of the land to 58.3 percent, arable 12.8 percent, nature conversation 15.1 percent, forestry 5.3 percent (486 967 ha) and others 8.5 percent. The total KwaZulu-Natal land area is 9.1 million ha.
The economic performance of rural areas is lagging that of urban areas in many parts of the world. While there have been many efforts to foster economic development in rural areas involving substantial public and private investments, most have failed. There is a pressing and widely recognised need for new approaches to rural economic development, drawing on broader learning about the sources of competitiveness in the global economy. Attempting to mitigate the generic deficiencies of regions will not be sufficient.
Instead, each rural region needs a distinctive strategy that reflects its unique strengths, its particular mix of clusters and which integrates its economy with the closest urban centres. The recently released National Strategic Planning green paper prioritises the rural development objective for our countryside and for the people who live and work there. Rural areas are a vital part of country make-up and its identity.
Our fantastic ranges of striking and beautiful landscapes are among the things that give us character from mountains to steppe, from great forests to rolling fields. Many of our rural areas face significant challenges. Some of our farming and forestry businesses still need to build their competitiveness. More generally, average income per head is lower in rural regions than in our towns and cities, while the skills base is narrower and the service sector is less developed.
Also, caring for the rural environment often carries a financial cost. On the other hand, our countryside has a great deal to offer. It gives us essential raw materials. Its value as a place of beauty, rest and recreation when we look after it is self-evident. It acts as our lungs, and is therefore a battleground for the fight against climate change. And many people are attracted by the idea of living and/or working there, provided that they have access to adequate services and infrastructure.
This province is already in the process of extending its support to rural communities beyond agricultural interventions. Our support has extended to broader development planning support.
We believe that the best way to achieve rural development is through the community itself, not through market forces, but through accountability mechanisms which keep all service providers, including government, accountable to the community according to the principle of Batho Pele. Participation is crucial to development.
Rural development initiatives should work in tandem and complement other development initiatives. Its central tenet is that, “problems facing rural communities—unemployment, poverty, job loss, environmental degradation and loss of community control—need to be addressed in a holistic and participatory
way.”
We could, for example, achieve a lot through building social enterprises. Sometimes called the cooperatives, these are community based social enterprise that can be ambassadors for rural development partnership between government agencies, small to medium enterprises, large national or transitional corporations and the not for profit sector and aims for social, economic and/or environmental outcomes that none of these agencies could achieve for and by themselves.
We need an active rural development programme because this will help us to achieve valuable goals for our countryside and for the people who live and work there. Critically, the rural development policy must, at its core, be driven by the need to have all the partners, whether from government or the private sector, synchronising their activities in order to derive maximum returns.
Perhaps one of the single most missing factors in our rural development endeavours has been lack of coordination and synchronisation of initiatives.
We have no doubt that, among other things, the policy on rural development, when it is finalised it would have taken this need into account. We must also strive to, as we draft this policy, address all the challenges that are currently attendant to rural development.
Land legal issues, topography, lack of infrastructure and many other factors must be dealt with. Many times we have heard of brilliant development ideas getting stillborn simply because there are these bottlenecks.
The comprehensive rural development strategy, we believe, must emphasise sustainable development, and its release would not have come at any better time than now. It must:
* create mechanisms that ensure real participation by rural women in all project components and subcomponents
* ensure that project services reach a significant number of poor rural women
* improve the living conditions of women who are heads of households and rural women in general
* ensure equitable participation by rural men and women in technical assistance and technological transfer activities under agricultural and micro-enterprise projects
* guarantee equitable access to productive resources for both men and women
* create an enabling climate for women to play an effective and broad role in all project-generated actions
* foster and ensure equitable access to credit for men and women in all projects
* introduce market information systems on the production and marketing of agricultural products, guaranteeing equal access for men and women.
In KwaZulu-Natal, we are on the move. In setting the development agenda for the province for the next five years, the province is driving a number of flagship programmes including agrarian transformation, rural development and land reform.
In implementing the above programmes the province has identified three intervention strategies for agrarian transformation, namely:
* food security programme
* emergent farmer programme
* commercial enterprise/farmer support programme
Emergent communal farmer programme
The emerging farmer programme is aimed at providing support to disadvantaged farmers to enable persons in this category to increase their contribution to agricultural production in KwaZulu-Natal. These farmers are on land where the farming enterprise is not fully developed as a commercial operation and the farmer is not an experienced and trained commercial farmer.
This category of farmers is primarily on communal land and land reform projects where settlement and subsistence agriculture are dominant. These farmers require support at a primary production level. The support required in these projects is mainly the following:
* General farming support in mentorship and training
* On farm infrastructure support in inputs, soil testing, fencing, mechanisation & machinery, irrigation
* Off farm infrastructure such as dip tanks and sale yards
* Support in ploughing and other direct interventions
* Crops are typically not specialised such as maize and dry beans.
The Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development has developed a comprehensive support programme for this category of farmer.
Commercial farmer and tourism enterprise support programme
These are emerging farmers and tourism operators are have acquired developed agricultural and tourism enterprises. The access to these commercial enterprises has often been through the land reform programmes, and through development finance institutions like the Land Bank and Ithala. There are also an increasing number of Black persons who has acquiring commercial farms outside of the Land Reform Programme. The State is investing substantially in these enterprises and if the rural development benefits from these enterprises are to be realised, then there must be dedicated resources to provide appropriate support.
These emerging farmers and tourism operators face a number of challenges; including the need for comprehensive training and capacity building, access to finance, access to markets and technical support. The province and the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform have established an institutional vehicle to provide these support services. The Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) will essentially be a one stop shop that will provide an envelope of resources and services that can be mobilised:
* Capacity building, training and mentoring in enterprise management land care and land ownership, and technical training
* Technical support in production and business support, access to information, empowerment in the broader value chain
* On-farm support such as infrastructure, timeous delivery of inputs, and early warning systems for farmers.
* Access to resources and partnerships with development finance institutions, commodity organisations and other private players
The SPV is an inter-departmental initiative bringing together resources and capacity from the provincial Departments of Economic Development and Tourism, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Development; and nationally the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform and the Department of Trade and Industry. A key development and delivery modality is through partnerships and relationships with the private sector and other civil society institutions. We have had very fruitful engagements and discussions with key commodity organisations on the establishment and running of the SPV, such as sugar, timber and citrus who are here today.
The delivery of support must be appropriate and be through these public and private partnerships, through the establishment of agricultural service centres, and local service level agreements. The key is there must be real partnerships based on risk sharing and ownership of the development trajectory. Encouraging the circulation of resources and value adding processes will assist in creating the holistic impact and impetus for rural development.
Programme director, again we are humbled by the fact that this policy platform has landed here in KwaZulu-Natal. We have no doubt that our input will, to a large extent, shape our country’s rural development policy and put us as a country on a growth trajectory. May our deliberations live up to the expectations of those who have entrusted with the privilege to lead.
I thank you
Issued by: Department of Economic Development and Tourism, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
13 September 2009
Source: KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government (http://www.kwazulunatal.gov.za/)
