Migration to Africa a godsend for poor farmers
Five successive years of drought and crop failure had all but ruined small farmer Nagappa. The village moneylender warned of serious consequences if he did not start paying back the 30,000 rupees ($5,185) he had borrowed to sow his cotton field.
Crop failure and huge debts had resulted in about 450 suicides by farmers in his district of Anantapur, in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, since 2000.
But the 35-year-old father of three was determined not to leave his family to face the moneylenders alone by taking his own life, and ended up working in the nearby city of Vijaywada as a porter at the railway station, earning 2,500 rupees a month.
Now he is buoyed with fresh optimism about farming after being among a lucky few selected to start an innovative scheme for Andhra Pradesh's hard-hit agricultural communities.
He is among 500 poverty-stricken small farmers selected by the state government for migration to east Africa to set up co-operative farms.
'The gods have smiled on me at last. My prayer has been answered. I am lucky that I never despaired and committed suicide. I have been told by the officials that by the middle of next year I can take the flight for Africa. It seems too long a wait,' Nagappa said.
Senior Andhra Pradesh officials are currently touring east Africa, where some governments are ready to welcome Indian farmers to till vacant fertile lands.
'Kenya and Uganda have already expressed eagerness to receive Indian farmers. Tanzania is also likely to give a positive response by next week,' said a member of the Indian team that visited Nairobi.
'They know that our skilled, drought-hardy and innovative farmers can contribute to the prosperity of those countries, and the Africans can learn and benefit from the skills of the Indians.'
Harry Mutuma Kathurima, Kenya's high commissioner in India, said this month after meeting the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh that his country had more than 50,500 hectares of arable land that could be leased to Indian farmers.
'We have the fertile land and abundant water. Only 5 per cent of the land there is cultivated. What we need is the 'green revolution' experience of Indian farmers,' Mr Kathurima said.
The Andhra Pradesh government is enthusiastically funding the project, which is expected to bring hope to the lives of more than half a million poverty-stricken farm families in the drought-prone west of the state.
'Our farmers have suffered from drought while these African countries have excellent infrastructure and land, but do not have people to farm it,' said state agricultural minister Raghuveera Reddy.
In the first phase, 500 farmers are scheduled to arrive in Africa by the middle of next year, with the first going in the next few weeks.
According to V. Hanumantha Rao, a local economist, 10,000 to 15,000 Andhra farmers could be rehabilitated in east Africa and it will take at least five years to relocate them all.
One unnamed Congress politician in Andhra Pradesh was quoted as saying that Indian farmers had good skills but had been held back by poor conditions at home. In Africa they could earn US$3,000 every year, more than three times they could hope for in India.
