Fruit Trees for African Villages
Help plant fruit tree seedlings in a “Millenium Village” in Africa.
The Millennium Development Goals are the world’s time-bound and quantified targets for tackling the many dimensions of extreme poverty by 2015, and now you can help with the first goal: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty.
How can fruit trees help? These fruit trees are an essential part of a larger program to provide diverse, high-value food crops in some of the poorest regions of Africa.
<!–Millennium Village Profile: Ruhiira, Uganda
The Millennium Villages in the Ruhiira cluster are spread over several hundred square kilometers with extremely poor or non-existent roads. Food production in Ruhiira has been declining over the years, and that, combined with an overdependence on banana as a main food source, has made malnutrition, especially among women and children, highly prevalent.
Thanks to this program, the villages have made major strides in food security and diversity in the past year, and farmers have even been able to contribute maize to the school feeding program. Nearly all of Ruhiira’s 6,000 farmers have diversified their farms to include high-value crops such as leafy vegetables and spices.
More than 400,000 seedlings have been planted in Ruhiira, many of them fruit trees such as citrus, papayas, mangos, and avocados. Mature fruit trees help diversify the local diet as well as battle erosion and return nutrients to the soil. When their fruiting lifespan is done, the wood can be used to supplement the critical shortage of firewood in the area.
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Update from the Field
March 2018
Your donations have helped farmers across sub-Saharan Africa improve their livelihoods! Millennium Promise has been able to expand their efforts and provide more than tree seedlings to farmers, including fertilizers, tools, and animal feed. All these efforts help farmers grow and provide more food for their communities. Ghana farmers were supported to plant Cajanus Cajan to improve soil fertility for their communities (pictured to the right). Your donations have benefited the community in so many ways.
Millennium Promise has also been able to provide the members of Kazamoyo Poultry Group with start-up kits thanks to your donations. Each kit contains wire mesh, feeders, pesticides, and medicine including vitamins to keep chickens healthy. Mustafa (pictured to the right) is a member of the Kazamoyo Poultry Group and received one of these kits. He started with 10 chickens and now has almost 150, including 50 chicks. He is now able to sell eggs and chicks, earning him a steady monthly income. He has been able to buy a better mattress and a plot of land where he plans to build his own house this year. Mustafa’s lifestyle has improved drastically thanks to your donations!
Millennium Promise, our partner in this work, created the Millennium Villages project, a bold, innovative model for helping rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty. With simple solutions like providing high-yield seeds, fertilizers, medicines, drinking wells and materials to build school rooms and clinics, Millennium Promise is effectively combating extreme poverty and nourishing communities into a new age of health and opportunity. Currently, Millennium Promise works in 80 villages across ten different countries — Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda.
