Our Lives Our Land Programme

Our Lives Our Land is supporting the marginalised and impoverished communities in western Kenya, southwest Tanzania and southern Malawi. Areas where fishing and agriculture form the backbone of the rural economy, providing livelihoods for 85% of the population.

Characterised by high population and poverty rates, these rural communities have poor resilience to climate change and widespread problems associated with environmental degradation that have seriously damaged the ecology and the surrounding lowland and highland farmland. Persistent drought, high commodity prices, extreme weather fluctuations, and poor natural resource management, coupled with an over reliance on harmful agrochemicals, have led to increased pest damage and poor yields every year. In addition, limited access to farm inputs, knowledge & information, and poor access to reliable, safe water, continue to hinder the efforts of these smallholders and fishing communities. There is an urgent need to adopt sustainable climate-resilient mechanisms that reduce food gaps and protect the livelihoods of those most at risk of slipping into extreme poverty and starvation.

Our Lives Our Land builds on our understanding that farmers are experts in managing the ecology of their farms, and working together with external support – in the form of new information, appropriate technology and carefully invested inputs – they are able to enhance crop and livestock production, protect the environment, increase food security, and improve health and household economy.

We are supporting around 5,000 families in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi, assisting them in developing more diverse and sustainable livelihoods. These include tangerine tree production, goat breeding, community aquaculture, bee-keeping, mango tree grafting, cassava, maize and banana production, water projects and agricultural and livestock cooperatives. These projects are enabling those families most at risk of remaining trapped in poverty to expand farm production, trial new seed varieties and appropriate technology, and gain more agricultural and animal husbandry knowledge. This has led to greater crop yields and more farm surplus, improving household food security and family nutrition, and stronger resilience against the impacts of climate change. 

This year (2022) marks the expansion of our sustainable livelihoods’ funding into Southern Malawi with a new Our Lives Our Land project being delivered by TMT Malawi. The project builds on our ‘Wezesha’ livelihoods project, combining sustainable livelihoods work with educational objectives to build the capacity of vulnerable families so that they can afford to cost of education and reduce barriers preventing disadvantaged children from enrolling and remaining in school. Activities include, means tested bursaries, extra tuition, sanitary towel awareness and distribution and sexual health education. 

This project includes a participatory Farmer’s Field School extension programme will empower caregivers to grow enough food for subsistence and agribusiness and help them establish farmers co-operatives. Through collective collaboration, cooperative members will develop a range of agribusiness such as goat breeding, pig keeping beekeeping and poultry keeping. We will continue to provide livelihoods inputs, training and capacity building support through farming extension programs, marketing support and loan schemes.

Wezesha is a Swahili word that means “enable” and this project expands our sustainable livelihoods projects into the rural areas of Mwanza, Neno, Chikwawa and Nsanje Districts. This southern region of Malawi has the country’s highest number of families living in extreme poverty, so our project will benefit single parent families and households with large numbers of dependents, those caring for orphans, albino or disabled children, single parent households, and those living with long-term health issues such as HIV.  

The project, which started in 2019, is asset-led and builds on existing resources and skills to ensure local ownership and sustainable outcomes. It aims to help those living in poverty rediscover their own local resources for economic empowerment by supporting ideas and solutions through our Farmer’s Field School extension training. This empowers community members to grow enough food for both subsistence and agribusiness and establish their own Cooperative Society. Through collective collaboration, the cooperative members will initiate and co-ordinate the management of a range of agribusiness activities. It also supports the improvement of land-based livelihoods and increases household income, with farming extension programmes for higher yields, marketing of farm produce and loan schemes.

From 2015 to 2023, we funded The Mango Tree Kenya’s Sustainable Aquaculture Project to support fishing livelihoods through reclaiming sand mine gullies and constructing lined fishponds for tilapia production. The project resulted in increased food security and raised income levels, making significant improvements to the local ecology and empowering disadvantaged single-parent women who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Fish farmers were encouraged to invest some of their profits back into their farms and have become visibly more resilient and independent. Ponds continue to generate an average annual income of KSH30,000 (£250) and 90% of families in the project put these funds towards education costs for their children.