The Zambia Corporative Federation – ZCF has disclosed that’s its community run solar milling plants dotted across the country are charging only K10 to mill a 50kg bag of maize into Millie meal and this should aid to further bring down the price of the commodity.
ZCF further confirmed the completion of the US$170 million solar milling plant project across the country, achieving 84% target. ZCF also disclosed that of current installed equipment, 65% of the plants are currently operational.
The Corporative had in 2015 set out to install 2,000 Solar Mini-Milling Plant in various rural districts of the country under the Presidential milling plant initiative. This initiative was aimed at providing an alternative milling option at affordable prices to cushion seasonal escalating mealie meal prices from private millers.
ZCF Executive Director James Chirwa has told the Zambian Business Times – ZBT in an exclusive interview that a total of 1,683 Solar powered hammer mills have been installed across the country out of the 2,000 targeted, saying some adjustments were made due to price differences and model of equipment installed.
He added that other adjustments were made to accommodate and include three (3) more service and training centers built in North Western, Western and Northern Province out of the 5 center’s initially set to be built in Lusaka (for Lusaka Province), Serenje (for central province), Chipata (for Eastern Province) , Kalulushi (for Copperbelt Province) and Choma (for Southern province).
“We included three more training center’s so that people from the provinces mentioned above would benefit as well given that this is a national project which intends on having every beneficiary on board from communities across the country,” He added.
He further said that ZCF is looking forward to have the 35% of hammer mills operational stating that the process has been slowed down due to some plants being broken down as a result of some individuals in communities vandalizing or in some extreme cases blatant theft of solar panels. The ZCF Director said however that replacement of these solar panels and some vandalized plants equipment has begun and the target is to get all of them operational before end of this year’s maize marketing season.
When asked about the affordability and the current charge for milling a K50 bag of maize, Chirwa said the price is only K10 per bag and that the money collected goes back to primary cooperatives in communities for improvement of operations.
ZCF has since appealed to the community cooperatives and citizens of Zambia at large to take keen interest in supporting this important national project. There is need to guard the equipment from vandals and by means of capacity building and education among others to ensure Zambians get the benefits intended.
The current official price of mealie meal in Zambia today stands at K137 per 25kg bag of maize. For those interested in cutting costs, a 50kg bag of recently harvested maize price at local markets has dropped to between K80 and K120, meaning that a trip to the nearest solar milling plant can cut the price of mealie meal at household level by about half.
