Kasaka Roadside Market

The Kasaka Roadside Market has launched! It's a few kilometers south of Kafue town at the Kasaka area, it's a market, and it's beside the road. Woot.
The three nearby farmer groups - Muchuto Waterworks, Kasaka Clixby, and Nutrition - worked together to clear land, build temporary stands, and sell vegetables every Saturday. IDE played a strong role in facilitating the market committee to work out the details, and paid for some advertising of the launch. Rather than a market operated by traders ('marketeers') like what's in Kafue town, or one of cartels of traders (Sowetto in Lusaka), this market will be managed by farmers themselves, and farmers will sell their goods. The two buyers will be marketeers and highway traffic - both enticed by the low prices and ease of access. The marketeers will be purchasing wholesale. In Zambia, that means what you can carry to sell piecemeal at another market, like a 20kg crate of tomatoes.
Since I arrived in Kafue, I've visited this place almost once a week. I've even got some pictures of progress.

The launch day was pretty fun. I sort of chilled around all morning and talked to farmers and field staff, met Zamseed and Zambian Fertilizers agents, and got to take some pictures/video. We had the Distrit Commissioner attend as the honoured guest, and had some speeches and drummers/dancers perform. Good times. And then everyone came to drink chibwantu (not chibuku!) from shared plastic mugs.

I want to reserve my judgement for the future, when I've seen more market days and talked to more farmers and the marketing committee about their thoughts. For now, I think they totally dropped the ball on advertsing and publicity, and they haven't been very organized for the launch. There was a lot of ambiguity about what would happen though, and it's only been open for one day. There is a lot of enthusiasm and buy-in/investment from the farmers though. So it may start slowly, but hopefully remains and becomes successful.

I know the district plans on funding three markets between Lusaka and the bridge to Southern Province. This is the first market, and they will receive funds for a permanent structure. It was built on United Church of Zambia lands, donated to the farmer groups, so political action should be restricted to funding. I really hope this serves as a successful model for other farmer groups/other IDE work/Zambia/whatever. There's still a lot that needs to happen and it sucks I can't be around for all of it.