When drought hit the Southern Province of Zambia last year, 62-year-old smallholder farmer Alfred Noogna lost almost everything. “I only managed to harvest 12 bags of maize last year,” he says sadly. “In a good year, I can harvest up to 200.”
Faced with a triple whammy of crop failure, COVID-19 and economic recession, Alfred’s future was looking bleak. Fortunately, he was one of 7,800 farmers enrolled in a World Food Programme (WFP) index...