Cape Town - South Africa -  Activities Update

Inception Visit to Cape Town and Core Team Formation

The inception visit was undertaken July 17-20 2006.. The objectives of the vist included:

• Making official contacts with Cape Town City Council
• Introducing the proposed Urban Agriculture (UA) project to councillors and chief officers and get their feedback on the issues and processes
• Conduct a preliminary stakeholder analysis
• Tour UA sites in Cape Town in preparation for pilot project
• Identify UA baseline issues in Cape Town and tentatively identify issues for research and training

The discussions in Cape Town indicated that a policy was in its final stages of preparation and following the same steps as was in the implementation of the project in Bulawayo would result in duplication. It was agreed to revise the approach and have the project in Cape Town focus on a smaller area of the city with PRA and training activities focussing on the particular area of Fezuka-Phillipi. The core team approved the revised project document in November.

 Council approved the UA policy for the city in December.

The stakeholder analysis currently underway will result in other actors joining the interim core team.

 Cape Town Training Needs Assessment

A visit was undertaken to Cape Town from July 17 to 20. The visit established that there are trained UA professionals in Cape Town. The training assessment instrument that had been developed had to be modified to take into account some of these issues. Cape Town agreed to the revised instrument.

-------------------------

Training of Trainers (TOT)

The June 2007 visit was for the purpose of conducting a ToT for the key drivers of the Cape Town Project. Stakeholders from government departments, council departments, NGOs, and other civic groups attended the ToT. Percy from MDP-RUAF and Henk de Zeeuw from ETC-RUAF head office delivered the modules. They were assisted by Thembie Chiromo from SNV Zimbabwe who is one of the initial trainers in the Eastern and Southern Africa region who were trained in 2005 in Harare. Also in attendance were two colleagues from Ndola in Zambia who attended as observers. They had earlier on been identified as potential key drivers in the Ndola pilot project.

It was observed earlier on in the training that insufficient ground work had been done in raising the team’s awareness on the CFF Project. The time lapse between the initial contacts had also meant that some of the people who knew about the project had either left their organizations, or had been reassigned to other portfolios. Henk and Percy then modified the ToT to also be an awareness raising, and team building exercise. Whilst the team was not so happy with the new approach initially since they had come prepared to be trained, they later realized the importance of understanding the project and their roles in it. At the end, the people were clearer of their roles and were raring to go. The team from council also looked more fired up.

The coordination structure in Cape Town operates at two levels. This was agreed to as a deliberate move to address the peculiar project needs of Cape Town. The stakeholders appeared to be operating at two different levels where there was an active group at the operational level and a not-so-active yet important group at management level. At the ToT, the identified key stakeholders of the Cape Town Project were constituted into a core team of the project. These are the drivers of the project on a day-to-day basis. They plan, manage, and monitor the multi-stakeholder action planning (MAP) process. The group comprises of representatives of key council departments, government departments, NGOs, and CBOs. Above this core team is another decision making body made up of people and institutions that have the authority to make decisions on higher order issues such as resources for the project. This group includes Stanley Visser, Rob Small, and other heads to which core team members report. 

Whilst the lower group (Core Team) is now firmly in place since they were the participants at the ToT, the other group (Management Team) is not yet as well established

. Local Coordinator

One of the key issues that came up whilst looking at the future of the Cape Town Project was the need for a local coordinator who would assist the council coordinating team. The team leader (Stanley Visser) appeared too busy with other responsibilities. Percy and Henk had preferred the workshop Rappoteur, Grace Stead, who had worked for council as a Town Planner and was now running her own consultancy as the local coordinator.. Unfortunately she later turned down the offer arguing she is too busy at the moment. 

As at mid September, the Cape Town team has since conducted interviews for the Local Coordinator and have identified their preferred candidate. What remains is for the MDP-RUAF team to agree with the choice made. Percy is already working on going to Cape Town as soon as his visa is out. It has also been agreed that he takes time to give the local coordinator orientation in terms of project awareness, expected duties and outputs. 

This was conducted from 5 to 9 November 2007. This was timed to come after the appointment of the Local Coordinator who we wanted to benefit from the activity as well as assist in it. Indeed he assisted in preparing for the event. This was also a good platform for him to meet the stakeholders and to be introduced to them. Key stakeholders such as the City of Cape Town, Abalimi, MJC, and different government departments were represented at the workshop.

The workshop was referred to as a training and planning workshop. It sought to achieve two main objectives; The first objective was to develop the project core team members’ capacity to conduct the Situation Analysis of urban agriculture in Phillipi; The second was to further develop the core group driving the MAP process in Cape Town by bringing them together and help in team building.

Modules relevant to Situation Analysis were delivered to the group by Henk and Percy assisted by local team members and the Coordinator. In order to further familiarize the stakeholders with the task at hand, one of the days comprised field activities whereby participants went out to conduct some farming systems analysis.

The workshop effectively prepared the MAP team to undertake the SA.

Situation Analysis

Preparations for the situation analysis are at an advanced stage. Teams to conduct the various components of the SA have been created and funds made available. It is expected that the fieldwork will be completed by early February 2008 and the report will be available by end of February.