Zambia's Small Solar Powered Mills Helping Farmers Drive Down Costs
For Inonge Imutowana, buying food for her family of six is becoming increasingly costly. On the outskirts of the capital, a 25-kilo bag of staple mealie meal that cost 65 kwacha a year ago now is selling for 140 kwacha ($14).
Across Zambia, drought that swept across the region last year, leading to widespread crop failure, has sent cereal prices soaring.
The high cost of buying food has persuaded a share of small-scale farmers to hang onto their maize, rice and cassava harvests and mill them for their own household use and for their livestock, rather than selling the grain into the market.
But a combination of higher fuel prices and unstable electrical supplies - both the result of lack of rainfall hitting hydropower - mean many small grain mills are charging higher prices for milling, or don't have sufficient capacity.
But Zambia's government hopes it has an answer: Since 2015 it has been installing hundreds of small solar-powered mills in rural areas as a way to help hold down the price of producing food.
Marilylle Soveran