Small-scale rural farmers face myriad challenges, including drought, lack of appropriate infrastructure like roads, power supply and piped water, lack of skills, poor access to markets, lack of inputs, high post-harvest losses and low yields. These challenges can be addressed by such actions as expanding irrigation, promoting climate-smart agriculture, developing appropriate infrastructure, ensuring access to value chains and supporting upstream and downstream industries in the sector.
In South Africa, there are a number of challenges associated with the various aspects of waste management. In rural areas, greater distances arising from sparse settlement patterns, combined with poor infrastructure, make service delivery difficult. In addition, recycling has not gained traction for the majority of South Africa’s population due to a lack of buy-in for the separation of waste at source and a lack of infrastructure to properly handle the separated wastes. Industrial symbiosis would be important for the manufacturing sector, and the country would benefit greatly from diversion of waste from landfills.
Overall, areas of focus for policy support in South Africa include:
- Revitalization of the agricultural sector and the agro-processing value chain, where interventions at the level of the small-scale farmer could boost productivity;
- Incentives for private sector investment through new partnerships and assistance with access to markets and sources of raw materials through industrial symbiosis/circular economy networking;
- Decentralization of waste-to-energy generation for on-site use, which reduces demand on the grid and can generate excess power for export to the grid.
SWITCH Africa Green initiatives under this component are aimed at unlocking the potential of micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, cooperatives and township enterprises by supporting their growth and the adoption of sustainable consumption and production principles and practices.
