SAFIRE Unveils Five-Year Plan to Restore 50,000 Hectares, Empower 90,000 Zimbabweans

The Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources (SAFIRE) has unveiled an ambitious five-year strategy aimed at restoring 50,000 hectares of degraded land, planting one million trees and strengthening the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Zimbabweans through community-led environmental stewardship.

Launched in Harare on Friday, the SAFIRE Strategic Plan 2026–2030 places ecosystem restoration, sustainable livelihoods and community control over natural resources at the centre of the organisation’s next phase of work.

The plan targets 90,000 community participants, 25,000 empowered farmers, 45 protected wetlands and 30,000 hectares under afforestation and reforestation programmes.

It also seeks to strengthen 1,000 nature-based entrepreneurs, establish 20 community enterprises and create market linkages for products including honey, baobab and mopane worm.

The organisation says the strategy is built on the premise that communities are more likely to protect natural resources when they directly benefit from them.

In a speech read on his behalf at the launch by Angella Kabira, Environment, Climate and Wildlife Ministry Chief Director Washington Zhakata said Zimbabwe’s worsening environmental challenges required approaches that put communities at the centre of conservation.

“Zimbabwe is confronting a changing environmental and climate landscape,” Zhakata said, pointing to droughts, extreme temperatures, land degradation, biodiversity loss and increasing pressure on forests and wetlands.

“Our response must therefore be clear: we cannot protect nature without protecting people and we cannot build resilient communities without protecting nature.”

Zhakata said SAFIRE’s approach was aligned with Government’s development priorities, including Vision 2030 and the Second National Development Strategy, as well as the country’s climate and biodiversity commitments.

The ministry challenged SAFIRE and its partners to ensure the strategy produces tangible results rather than becoming another policy document.

“I therefore challenge SAFIRE and its partners to translate this Plan into restored ecosystems, protected wetlands and forests, climate-resilient communities, sustainable livelihoods and stronger biodiversity outcomes,” he said.

The strategy is organised around three interconnected pillars: sustainable livelihoods, ecological restoration and natural resource management governance.

Under sustainable livelihoods, SAFIRE intends to strengthen 1,000 entrepreneurs, including 500 women and 200 young people, establish 20 nature-based businesses and connect 20 enterprises to formal finance and buyers.

Each supported enterprise is expected to reach a minimum annual revenue target of US$24,000, while participating households are targeted to earn an additional US$100 per month.

The ecological restoration pillar is considerably larger in scale, with SAFIRE targeting 50,000 hectares of degraded land, 45 wetlands, 1,000 hectares under farmer-managed natural regeneration and 10,000 hectares under conservation agriculture.

The plan also targets 5,000 hectares of regenerative agriculture and 1,000 hectares of agroforestry systems.

The third pillar seeks to strengthen natural resource governance across 15 districts and 80 wards, including ward-level institutions, district bodies and community governance structures.

SAFIRE’s Board Chairperson, Farai Chitsa, said the organisation’s approach was rooted in more than three decades of community-based environmental work.

The organisation began in 1994 in response to severe environmental degradation associated with the Mozambican refugee crisis and subsequently developed into a community-based natural resource management organisation operating across Zimbabwe and the wider region.

The chairperson said the new strategy was intended to deepen local ownership, expand nature-based enterprises, build climate resilience and scale SAFIRE’s impact.

“An unimplemented strategy only feeds the dogs,” he said, emphasising the organisation’s commitment to ensuring that the plan translates into action in communities.

Implementing the strategy, however, will require significant financial resources.

SAFIRE estimates that it will need approximately US$5 million over the five years, with US$1.75 million earmarked for ecological restoration, US$1.4 million for nature-based enterprises, US$1.1 million for institutional capacity and US$750,000 for strengthening local institutions.

The organisation says it has already secured about US$789,000 for 2026, leaving a funding gap of approximately US$411,000 for the year. It is seeking to mobilise a further US$3.67 million over the five years.

SAFIRE is calling on development partners, academia, research institutions and the private sector to invest not only in individual projects but also in the organisation’s long-term capacity.

For Government, the challenge now is to ensure that the partnership between the State, communities and organisations such as SAFIRE produces visible environmental and economic gains.

“By 2030, we should be able to point to tangible improvements, not only in reports, but on the ground and in the lives of the people we serve,” Zhakata said.

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