The Komati downstream development project: Achievements and challenges

Abstract

To overcome widespread rural poverty, raise incomes and improve food security, Swaziland has begun a process of commercialisation of its subsistence farms. This strategy is based upon extending irrigation onto customary tenured land in the semi-arid lowveld and converting land to sugar cane production. The paper demonstrates that if farmers adopt an irrigated home garden as a supplement to the cash crop, then food security may be improved. However, changes to the EU's Sugar Protocol is undermining the financial viability of the participating farmers' associations and compromising the ability of the Komati Downstrean Development Project to improve living standards in the area. It argues that EU aid provided to offset changes to the EU Sugar Protocol should be targeted at the most vulnerable to those changes. © 2007 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.