Refugee farmers seek banana shoots, cassava cuttings

Refugees farmers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo living in Camp Molangue, about 120 km south of the Central African Republic (CAR) capital, Bangui, have asked the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to provide them with banana shoots and more cassava cuttings for cultivation. The refugees made their request on Tuesday to a FAO delegation that was inspecting farming projects at the camp, for which the FAO had provided maize, cassava and groundnuts over the last two years. The refugees fled fighting in their country from 1997-8 and have been living in Camp Molangue since 2001. One of them, Faustin Mabele, is an agronomist. He said at least 1,000 families had received 536 more hectares to cultivate during the current September-October planting season. "Most of us want to have plantain shoots to plant in that additional land, " Mabele told the FAO mission, which included Roger Larribe, a consultant for the agency on a visit to the CAR. Larribe told IRIN on Tuesday that with US $12,000 of the $128,000 refugee-farming project left, the FAO would before 30 October distribute at least 10 banana shoots to each refugee family. He said the shoots would be bought locally. With the same funds and within the same period, Larribe said, 400 refugees who were transferred from Bangui to the camp in December 2002, and who received neither seeds nor farming tools, would be provided these items. "Each family is to receive about 500 cuttings and farming tools," he said. The FAO office in Bangui, he said, still had 1,400 hoes, 1,400 machetes and 500 axes. The remaining tools would be distributed as rewards to those of the 30 refugee farming cooperatives that produced the largest quantity of food last season. Mabele said the refugees produced about 543 mt of food last season. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) gave 18 million francs CFA ($30,000) in August to buy 90 mt of maize from the refugee farmers, which will be distributed to 750 vulnerable refugees. Jean De Dieu Ndjopou, an employee of the Italian NGO, Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), working in the camp told IRIN that UNHCR, through COOPI, had already bought 22.4 mt of maize and 5.6 mt from nationals who, together with refugees, form farming cooperatives. Targeting 58 pregnant women, 78 nursing women, 150 elderly, 38 malnourished children, 400 transferred refugees and people suffering from different chronic diseases, the food aid would last until December. On Tuesday, the beneficiaries received their first ration made up of maize grains, palm oil bought from refugee and national farmers, as well as salt, sugar and beans purchased in Bangui. The refugee farm project is aimed at enabling the refugees to survive and make money. Some, who have limited food storage facilities, have asked the FAO to find buyers for their produce. FAO-Bangui Programme Officer Etienne Ngounio Gabia said the agency was considering how it and the National Livestock Federation of the Central African Republic (Federation Nationale des Eleveurs Centrafricains) could purchase some of the maize for another FAO pig and chicken rearing project that is about to be launched.