In June 2022, VIA was able to support our manufacturing and distribution partner, Rural Integrated Engineering (RIEng), to secure grant funding as part of the Water and Energy for Food Grand Challenge for Development (WE4F). WE4F seeks to scale ground-breaking water-energy-food innovations to impact food security, gender, and poverty reduction in an environmentally friendly way.

The purpose of this challenge is to find local businesses and entrepreneurs who can create and test different business models for the sale and support of VIA products.

This program is providing RIEng with financial support and technical assistance to scale out the use of VIA products throughout South Africa and Mozambique.

In the first phase of the project, RIEng and other collaborators will establish demonstration sites to showcase VIA products and the benefits they can provide to farmers. These demo sites will include smallholder irrigators on schemes and commercial irrigators growing a variety of crops. Farmers will be provided with training and access to ongoing advice and support throughout the demo phase. They will monitor crop production, water use and energy consumption and compare outputs to previous seasons results.

Building on the outcomes of the demonstrations, RIEng and VIA will then seek to expand the use of VIA tools to the private and public sectors in both countries. By the end of the project, we hope to assist 10,000 smallholder farmers in improving their food production while reducing their use of water and energy. This is an ambitious goal but one we believe is achievable and worth pursuing.

If you are a farmer in South Africa or Mozambique, or an organisation that works with farmers, and would like to know more about this project please Contact Us.

This product is made possible through the support of the Water and Energy for Food Grand Challenge for Development partners: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (MFA-NL), and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It is prepared by Rural Intergrated Engineering and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Water and Energy for Food Partners. Further information about Water and Energy for Food can be found at www.we4f.org