Fighting Malnutrition in Zambia

The article below is from the Imagine Zambia web site. I was especially interested because we had planted some of these moringa trees in our yard at Namwianga. One of our Zambian friends told us that an aid organization (NOT Imagine Zambia) brought moringa trees to his community several years ago and gave them away to the villagers to plant. However, no one bothered to tell the people how to use the trees for water purification or nutrition! Yet another example of aid improperly implemented and therefore ineffective.

Special Project: Moringa Trees for Zambia

Helping Zambia Fight Malnutrition!

Planting Moringa trees across Zambia

Imagine Zambia hopes to plant 20,000 trees for Ngabwe and 20,000 for Ministry of Education of Zambia (with 5 trees for every school at about 4,000 schools across Zambia.) We will plant a variety of trees including Moringa and fruit trees at locations across Zambia so that communities and students will learn about nutrition.

Moringa, which can be made into a powder, tea, or oil, provides significant quantities of potassium, calcium, protein, iron, vitamin A, and vitamin C.

Moringa truly is the miracle plant: by using the dried seeds you can even purify drinking water overnight and kill 90-95% of bacteria in the water.

Across Zambia, we can also use these trees to provide nutrition for orphans, vulnerable children, expectant and breastfeeding mothers, and other people in the community who need immune boosters and access to clean drinking water.

These nurseries will also provide local farmers with seedlings for their own needs and propagation of diverse species of trees, herbs, and vegetables. They will be able to process the seeds and leaves and seedlings and sell them all over Zambia.

The nurseries will also restore vegetation in areas that have previously been cleared. This will increase overall production of food in the area, increasing food security. This will also exemplify good agricultural practices like composting and companion planting.