Eighty-two kilometers outside Lusaka, on a stretch of open land beside Chabona Primary School, the ground is being prepared for something that will feed children for years to come. It’s the site of the Chabona Nutrition Garden & Orchard Project, a partnership between Zimworx, through The51 , and INUA Sustainable Impact, and the latest update from the field shows real roots taking hold.
The idea behind the project is simple but powerful, give Chabona Primary a fruit orchard and an irrigated vegetable garden that can diversify school meals, encourage attendance, and eventually generate its own income, a self-sustaining source of food and funding for the school, long after the initial investment is made.
The first fruit trees are already in the soil. On planting day, pupils and staff at Chabona turned out to put oranges, lemons, guava and nut trees into the ground, the beginning of an orchard that will one day put fresh fruit on the school’s plates. Alongside the orchard, vegetable seedlings have been germinating in nursery trays at INUA’s research farm, and they’re coming along well. Growth is on track for the transplant window, with the seedlings being hardened off ahead of their move to the Chabona site.
Getting to this point took careful groundwork. INUA’s field team spent time on site with school administration and community representatives, walking the proposed garden boundary with the Deputy Head Teacher, discussing plot layout with community members, and marking out and measuring the plot with pupils and staff looking on. It’s the kind of unglamorous, detailed work that makes sure a project like this is built to last, not just planted and left.
One piece of the puzzle remains outstanding, water. The existing solar pump and array at Chabona are undersized for an orchard and vegetable garden of this scale, and upgrading the solar water pump and irrigation system is essential before large-scale planting can move ahead into the dry season. Without it, young trees and seedlings won’t survive the months ahead, so it’s the clear priority before the project can scale up.
A follow-up site visit is already being scheduled, with two proposed dates on the table, to keep momentum going and confirm next steps on the irrigation upgrade.
A garden takes patience. Right now, what’s visible at Chabona is mostly groundwork, boundaries marked, trees planted, seedlings hardening off, a pump upgrade still pending. But that’s exactly what makes projects like this real, not a single ribbon-cutting moment, but a steady sequence of site visits, measurements, plantings and follow-through.
For Chabona Primary, the payoff will be tangible, fruit and vegetables on the menu, fewer reasons for children to miss school hungry, and eventually, a source of income the school can call its own. It’s a project built the way lasting change usually is: one tree, one seedling tray, one site visit at a time.