"Our destiny is to serve our farmers," FAO Zambia Rep's Farewell Message to Zambia

Dr George Okechi (far left) has served as FAO Zambia Country Representative since 2013

Having served as FAO Country rep to Zambia for 7 years, one can be tempted to forget that the day would come for Dr. George Okech to bid farewell and proceed to the next best thing that life has to offer him.

Having chosen a career in veterinary medicine, Dr. Okech noticed a disconnect between research findings and the information that was filtering into farming community. It is from here that his passion to make a difference in the livestock subsector grew.

“I really wanted to research ideas to really get into the communities…once you get results from the research institutions, they need to be disseminated by extension officers which we call transfer of technology…So I decided for myself that I really wanted to go and be that part of the transfer of knowledge,” Dr. Okech said.

This drive to share knowledge led him to leave his then job as a civil servant in Kenya and join OXFAM who appointed him to work in South Sudan as a Food Security Coordinator with a bias towards the livelihood aspect that is related to livestock production.

After 3 years, he was recruited by FAO in 2001.

“I joined FAO through the University of Boston [who] had an agreement with FAO and I was hired as a Community-based Animal Health Technical Advisor…the idea was to try and train what we used to call Community Health Workers - because that we had a big problem with a disease called rinderpest - so we needed to use the community based health workers to assist us control the [disease],” Dr. Okech narrated.

Rinderpest, also known as cattle plague, was an infectious viral disease that attacked not only cattle but some wild animals such as buffaloes, giraffes, large antelopes and warthogs.

The death rates of cattle were extremely high during the outbreak and Dr. Okech is proud to have been part of the team that helped eradicate rinderpest in Sudan through the training of community health workers to hastily recognize, diagnose and treat animals with rinderpest.

“One of the achievements I think I would recognize is having eradicated rinderpest in Sudan in 1999…And I’m saying that’s a big achievement because we used community health workers – these were semi-literate people - whom we trained and who assisted us to do mass vaccinations, and surveillance; and the world recognizes that one of the last places where we had rinderpest in Africa, we managed to get rid of it using community health workers,” he said.

Dr Okechi (right) touring a farm during a World Food Day commemoration

Following that successful run, Dr. Okech was appointed to head the FAO in 2006 and transferred to work from Juba. Six years later, he was appointed to work from Malawi and; after one year in 2013, he was transferred to work as FAO country representative for Zambia.

March 2020 marked his 7th year working in Zambia and he explained that he has enjoyed watching the country make impressive strides in its agriculture sector – an experience he will cherish.

“One of the strengths I’ve seen [in the agriculture sector] in the 7 years I’ve been here is…when I came [Zambia has] always had the big program – the FISP – and for a long time cooperating partners have been really concerned about this Farmer-Input Support program in terms of targeting, in terms of efficiency, in terms of effectiveness and whether the right people are the ones benefiting from this program…I must say that the things we have seen from this Program is that there has been an increase in productivity. Most of the bumper harvest we have seen over the years are mainly form this Program,” Dr. Okech noted.

“I’m glad to note that within FAO, we did manage to develop this module within the Conservation Agriculture Scaling-up [CASU]…what we call Farmer- Input Voucher Management Information System and working with the government we integrated with the government’s FISP to come up with a system - an e-voucher - which would make it easier and would be more transparent so that how we ended up establishing the ZIAMIS – the Zambia Integrated Agriculture Management Information System,” he explained.

ZIAMIS was rolled out during the 2017/2018 and enhanced private sector participation in FISP. The establishment of ZIAMIS required a thorough scrutiny of FISP beneficiaries which saw the Zambian government remove about 600,000 ineligible beneficiaries and consequently save up to a hundred million US Dollars.

“The same system also made sure it introduced a catalogue where there are lot of [crop] varieties where farmers could pick from and; that also encouraged farmers to go into diversification…and this catalogue also included even veterinary medicine, things to do with aquaculture and things like that” Dr. Okech said.

His working experience has of course been marred with various challenges more especially working outside his home country.

“Sometimes when you work with host governments, with farmers - sometimes as an outsider they would not have trust so the way I’ve done it is to build trust in the people you’re working and make them aware that there’s nothing you want out of then…Most important thing is to appreciate the challenges they are going through …and show the people you’re working with is that you’re not the person who knows it all – you learn from one another,” he explained.

He added that there is need to value the indigenous knowledge that farmers possess because the mandate of the FAO and the Ministries of Agriculture and; Fisheries and Livestock respectively, is to the farmers.

“Once you believe you have made a difference in a farmer’s life, including a farmers’ children’s life and livelihoods then you’ll be happy. That will be an achievement,” Dr. Okech explained.

At the end of July this year, Dr. Okech bids farewell not only to Zambia but to the FAO too. Born and raised in Kenya, he has opted to retire from his professional career and return to his homeland where he wishes to settle fully into farming and also commit more of his time to the truly valuable things in life such as family and rest.

 “I consider myself blessed because my father has just turned 92 and my mother has just turned 83 so I’d just love to be with them and to keep them company and to keep them happy. I think they deserve it. I think they’ll be happy to see me every day and catch up,” he chuckled.

He added that he would also volunteer to give back to his district county through food security advice services.

As he bids farewell to Zambia, he advises that there is still need to make agriculture attractive to the youth.

“I’m worried about the youth more than anybody because the truth is that - not only in Zambia but my home country Kenya - they don’t have jobs. Nowadays you go and study and you come out and you think you’ll find a job or the government will employ you. But that’s not guaranteed…I would encourage our youth to change their mindset. There’s a lot of income within agriculture which they can tap into. Let them go into agriculture as business…what the government and a number of us need to ensure is try to ensure linkages to the markets so that our youth wherever they grow [crops], they are able to reach market,” Dr. Okech said.