Mafisa
Location
Zambia
Sector
Agriculture
Type of Investment
Grant
Project Stage
Test & Transition
Length of Investment
2024+
Website
https://mafisa.org/
Investment Overview
Mafisa helps traditional cattle-raising communities in Zambia to thrive, free of poverty and resilient to climate change, by providing access to animal health services, improved grassland and fire management, and market linkages.
The Development Challenge
Livestock farming is central to Zambia’s economy and rural livelihoods, contributing 42% to agricultural GDP. An estimated 2 million people in Zambia live in traditional cattle-rearing communities, facing severe productivity challenges such as disease prevalence and management, rangeland degradation and poor water management. According to a national study, on average, half the animals in a herd simply die due to disease, poor health or calving complications, before they reach market, yielding no returns to farmers at all. Climate change is intensifying these problems, for example, by causing heat stress to animals, increasing their susceptibility to disease, or by creating more frequent droughts, limiting water sources.
The Innovation
Mafisa offers a holistic and accessible package of four critical services. The first is an animal health service which provides affordable annual vaccinations as well as weekly de-worming and tick control through spray races. The second is rangeland management support, which introduces regenerative rotational grazing practices and community-led fire management to support safe and sustainable ranges. The third facilitates market access by constructing and leasing buying centres where farmers can sell their cattle directly to buyers at fair prices. This approach ensures a steady supply of healthy cattle for buyers and a reliable market with better prices for farmers. The final service provides sustainable livelihood options for non-cattle owners, especially women and young people, through the provision of other farm inputs, such as vegetable seed and chickens, and savings and loans products.
Supporting the full package of services is crucial as they improve herd health and nutrition holistically. Otherwise, limited income gains will be realised from livestock production.
Our Investment
GIF has provided Mafisa with a $500,000 Test and Transition grant to help the organisation work towards three core objectives. These are:
- Providing animal health services to at least 6,300 farmers and supporting the adoption of Mafisa's full range of services by 63 communities covering 350,000 hectares of land.
- Strengthening internal Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) capacity to monitor and capture programme benefits effectively and inform decision-making.
- Documenting the programme by developing standard operating procedures and business plans to aid replicating it in new areas for scale.
Mafisa in numbers
People in Zambia live in traditional cattle-rearing communities
communities accessing support services over 350,000 hectares of land
GIF grant
Innovating for Climate Resilience
This investment is part of GIF’s Innovating for Climate Resilience sub-fund.