The ZAVSAP Fair

Wednesday 14 July was THE big day of 2010 for the other Volens network, the Zimbabwe Added Value on Sustainable Agriculture Produce programme. They were organizing a fair on processed food, where they would display all the products they had learned to make, have them taste, exchange recipes, link up with donors and retailers etc. Caroline and Thomas had rented the nelson Mandela Hall in the Harare Showgrounds, a huge hall, and all 9 members set up a stand.

I was there to film and document this entire event, as well as lending a hand and generally just seeing how this went. It was the first fair for that network, representing the highlight, almost one sixth of their total budget and for Thomas a step back into the organizing of salons and fairs. You can also read about it in the Herald, the official newspaper of Zimbabwe here.

It meant getting ten farmers from each member of the network (often from very rural and far away places) to Harare, put them up somewhere and arrange everything logistical for them. They all set up stands and would promote their products, as well as visit the other stands and see what other farmers made. In total, over 700 visitors came, from general public, over NGO and donor representatives as business men. I was happily filming away and doing interviews.

One thing that came back regularly was that visitors appreciated that some products were actually traditional, things their grand parents made before commercial and imported crops took over.

No other similar fair exists, other fairs focus mainly on raw crops that are sold, or livelihood. In rural areas, one hardly finds these products, it is often the same, unprocessed things that are everywhere: tomatoes, rape, spinach and onions. While in other parts of Africa, markets are flourishing everywhere and the informal economy is vital to the survival of many families, maybe even the backbone to the entire economy, in Southern Africa, the British seemed to have left a legacy of regulated markets and formal business, often leading to supermarkets (an interesting blog on this, from two of our couchsurfers).