Story by Oleen Ndori
RURAL communities across Zimbabwe are reaping the benefits of the Presidential Rural Development Scheme, with the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) spearheading agro-processing, value addition and market access initiatives.
Through a farm-to-market approach, ARDA is advancing the government’s rural industrialisation agenda by linking smallholder farmers to structured markets while promoting the beneficiation of agricultural produce.
Communities in Mwenezi, Zaka, Bikita, Wedza, Mhondoro and Murombedzi are among those benefiting from the programme, which is improving household incomes and strengthening rural livelihoods.
At the centre of this transformation is ARDA’s fruit processing plant in Norton, where tomatoes, mangoes and guavas sourced from rural farmers are processed into value-added products. The plant is also working towards establishing a bottling line to complete the value chain.
ARDA Director of Commercial Services, Mr Dominic Sadziwa, said the initiative is already delivering measurable impact.
“We are processing at the moment basically three foods, mangoes, guavas and tomatoes, coming from rural communities across Zimbabwe. We have just concluded the mango processing season, which ended on March 1, where we managed to process 350 metric tonnes of fresh mangoes that we picked from farmers, as far as Zaka, Bikita, Mwenezi, and, of course, from other A2 farmers across the nation.
“We have just started the guava season, and we anticipate processing about 1 000 metric tonnes of fresh guava by the end of the guava processing season, which we anticipate to end around mid-May, 2026. So, as ARDA, we have made a huge impact, as you can see that this programme is actually transforming rural communities.
“Our relatives, our parents out there in the rural areas, they are now able to benefit from this value addition exercise. It’s at the end of the day, we also pay what we call a post-processing incentive to the farmers after we have marketed our products,” he said.
The initiative has also received national recognition, with ARDA honoured for its performance at the 2025 Performance Contracts and Awards ceremony.
Speaking at the event, President Dr Emmerson Mnangagwa underscored the importance of results-driven governance.
“As a government, we all have a duty to ‘Implement, Deliver and Impact’ the lives and livelihoods of our fellow citizens. I am pleased that the public sector in general is showing higher levels of patriotism, servant leadership, hard, honest work, unity of purpose, professionalism and selfless service for the benefit of all our communities.
“It is commendable that the progress registered so far is partly due to the transformative results-based governance culture of the 2nd Republic. This is evident in agriculture, mining, infrastructure development, social services sectors, as well as in environment and climate mitigation measures, among other aspects,” he said.
Rural industrialisation remains a key pillar of Zimbabwe’s development strategy, as the country moves towards achieving an upper-middle-income economy by 2030. ARDA’s transformation of estates and irrigation schemes into agro-processing hubs is positioning rural communities at the centre of economic growth.
