The People – The Heart of COMACO’s Growing Impact and Success

Unifying food security, markets and conservation for a better and greener Zambia takes special people who believe in a dream and have the fight to help make it happen.  It is this type of people who have invested so much energy and dedication that has begun to make COMACO a dream come true for Zambia.   

Take Willy Banda, for example, he has dedicated his time and effort identifying and recruiting notorious poachers into the Poacher Transformation Programme (PTP). He ensures that the poachers surrender their wire snares and firearms and sign an agreement never to poach wildlife again. With the help of other staff, William ensures that transformed poachers are recruited into a 6-7 weeks transformation training capturing various livelihood skills and helps them to better understand the benefits of the programme. Upon graduation, the transformed poachers are provided with start up tools and become stewards of wildlife. COMACO has so far trained over 400 poachers and altogether the program has recovered over 900 illegal firearms from participating members of COMACO’s producer groups.

Another leader on the ground, pioneering great strides for COMACO, is Nemiah Tembo.  With amazing enthusiasm and vigour, he coordinates all of COMACO’s extension work among a growing number of over 30,000 farmers.  Nemiah works tirelessly to help people fight their way out of poverty and it is people like Nemiah and his team who give COMACO such a good reputation.  Responsibilities Nemiah and his staff of over 20 help direct include training farmers in sustainable farming methods to enhance soil fertility and crop yields, improved poultry husbandry, introduction of new crops, techniques for improved grain storage, and mobilization of producer groups into producer cooperatives. He also ensures that extension staff working under him follow up their training with regular monitoring to ensure farmers understand the skills they were taught.

Other COMACO heroes are the Regional Extension Coordinators, who report to Nemiah are Handsen Mseteka, Whiteson Daka and Peter Banda but operate out of regional offices.  Their work reflects true professionalism in every sense of the word that comes about from working 7-day weeks and many nights away from home, ensuring their farmers learn better skills that enhance rural livelihoods and promote conservation results

COMACO has the challenge of inspiring long-term adoption of these skills and a commitment to conservation by offering producer prices that reward farmers for their compliance of better farming and land use practices.  To meet this challenge, Business Manager James Phiri plans and executes much of the business strategies for processing raw commodities into some of Zambia’s highest quality food products that can return a premium value to the farmers who cooperate with the program.  James is another hero who has risen to the challenge of doing what no one thought COMACO could do – create exceptional value for conservation through farm-based products.  All around the country, Zambians are admiring and enjoying the products that bear the COMACO brand name, It’s Wild! – a real Zambia success story because it is helping uplift the lives of poor people around conservation products.  Supporting James’s work is also a team of engineers, processing specialists, graders, packagers and warehouse managers.  Backing up their work with untiring energy is Isaac Mwanaumo, COMACO’s procurement officer.  

There are many others who deserve mentioning and in the newsletters to follow, you will learn the names of staff who contribute greatly to COMACO’s success, but just as important, you will hear the stories of the people whose lives COMACO has touched, transformed and brought hope to.  For many, there was no alternative livelihood source save for poaching and natural resource degradation. These are stories straight from Zambia, not fiction, but real and from the people who lived them.