Gqumahashe Project
South Africa's Eastern Cape province, including the former Transkei and Ciskei bantustans, is underdeveloped and eroded with little infrastructure or industry. These areas are amongst the worse legacies of apartheid. Most striking is the province's absolute poverty. The average income is less that £10 per week, less than half the national average. The unemployment rate is very high especially in rural areas.
Students at the Agricultural and Rural Development Research Institute (ARDRI) of the University of Fort Hare worked with local communities to find ways of revitalising agricultural production - which had stagnated during the apartheid era. This meant that new methods could be introduced to compliment traditional animal husbandry; new cropping techniques enabled villages to move away from monoculture to highly productive market gardens. ARDRI's researchers assisted by pinpointing weaknesses in land tenure, finance, transport and marketing which were impeding agricultural development.
