By HUMPHREY NKONDE –

The concept behind emerging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will replace the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) this year, has embraced inclusive development.
MDGS are a set of goals that were designed by world leaders in 2000 to reduce by half global poverty by the year 2015, improve access to health, education, information communication technology, among others.
Development experts have said,  one of the failures of MDGs is that, they were not inclusive, the reason post-2015 development frameworks, including the SDGs, have emerged.
For instance, it has been argued that there were no specific indicators on how the MDGs would relate to the progress of the disabled.
The question therefore as we migrate from MDGs to SDGs in the next 15 years is: what is inclusive development?
According to the book Disability and Inclusive Development that has been published by United Kingdom’s Leonard Cheshire Disability it is “a concept that all stakeholders (women, children, disabled people, indigenous people, elderly and so forth have an equal right to  be participants in, and beneficiaries of, the global development agenda.”
Coupled with that definition, the book says that of the 1.2 billion poorest people surviving on less than a dollar a day throughout the world are those with disabilities.
Quoting statistics obtained from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the book goes on to say that 80 per cent of the disabled people living in developing countries are unemployed and that 51 per cent of disabled women did not have vocational rehabilitation.
Specifically on MDGs the book says: “The global community will not achieve UN Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015. We can say this with confidence because disabled people have been left out of the equation for the MDGs relating to poverty, health and education.”
In order to compare book discourse with realities on the ground, the Zambian Insight Media Group decided to look for a good example of how inclusive development could be illustrated and how it could be incorporated into global as well as country specific development goals.
The company picked on a 52-year-old blind woman who has excelled in agriculture to the extent that her maize production has gone beyond that of a nearby community school with several sighted pupils.
Monica Mulongoti has developed one of the most diversified small-scale farms in Luanshya’s Fisenge area from which Zambia’s deceased third President Levy Mwanawasa received a goat and cobs of maize in 2007.
The mother of 10 children, a custodian of eight orphans, a brother and an aged mother, has involved herself in animal husbandry, poultry, growing of fruits, agro-processing and is experimenting with how to grow rice in a dambo.
Ms Mulongoti grows maize to feed her family and has actually acquired another small holding within Fisenge, which she has offered to one of her seven sighted sons to participate in agriculture.
“I do not need to go elsewhere to grind my maize because the diesel-driven hammer mill that was acquired by a woman club I belong to is within my yard,” she said. “It is not in full use now because people have not yet harvested their maize.”
Ms Mulongoti, together with her equally blind husband, participates in rearing of village chickens, some of which were sold to buy iron sheets for a piggery when several neighbours are struggling to have suitable roofing materials for their dwelling mud-brick houses.
“I have a passion for rearing animals, the reason I constructed the piggery although I do not yet have pigs,” Ms Mulongoti said. “I would like to commend my husband who has now been struck by stroke because he constructed our kraal and chicken run without limiting himself as a blind person.”
The author was introduced to Ms Mulongoti by the former Luanshya district commissioner Denson Chisunka more than 10 years ago at the time the Fisenge farmer obtained an award for her best practices in goat rearing in relation to a project that was sponsored by Heifer International.
Heifer International provided goats to farmers in Fisenge on condition that they empowered others once the animals multiplied.
“I was given six goats by Heifer International in 2001,” she explained. “My goats multiplied and I paid back by offering six to another farmer in our group. I now have twelve goats although the number would have been higher had some of them not died from diseases.”
She explained that in December 2007 she gave President Mwanawasa a goat and fresh cobs of maize when the deceased Head of State visited Luanshya’s Roan Township.
Remembering the day she shook hands with the Head of State, she laughed and said, “I gave President Mwanawasa fresh cobs of maize and he got surprised because December is supposed to be a month of planting. I explained to him that I was a grower of both winter and rain-fed maize.”
What would have given Ms Mulongoti good cash follow was dairy farming which she started some time back.
She had two dairy cattle that have died-one of them used to give her 10 litres of milk in the morning and another 10 litres in the afternoon while the other one  produced half of that amount when milk was priced at K 3 per litre.
From the way Ms Mulongoti has managed her farm one would think that she has a degree in agriculture, but the reality is that she did not go beyond primary school.
“I only reached Grade 7 at Mporokoso School for the Blind,” she explained. “If had three more dairy cattle my bank account would be sound.”
Ms Mulongoti was among woman in a co-operative that constructed a milk collection centre in Fisenge, where Parmalat procures its milk from several farmers for processing.
Her small holding is backed by the Luanshya River that provides it with water, pasture for animals, wet portions from which she grows vegetables and sweet potatoes.
Wettest parts are being used for cultivation of rice and she asked First Lady Ester Lungu visit Luanshya and see what women are doing there.
During the field study, this author asked to hold the blind woman so that she could step in water and mud, but she jokingly retorted, saying: “You! How can you lead me in my own farm?”
The rice experiment has attracted agriculture experts from Luanshya, Chingola and other Copperbelt towns.
“I am involved in tilling the land and I can weed because I am able to differentiate grass from rice by sense of touch,” she said and plucked out grass from rice plants.
Using a petrol pump, water was in the past propelled from the Luanshya River and directed through a pipe to a tank that has been mounted on an anthill in front of her house.
From the anthill the water used to be directed to a tap in front of her house by force of gravity, but the system is not in use because the piping requires minor repairs.
The other benefit of the wet land is that it has supported cultivation of oranges in an orchard.
“You can get K 5 for one orange if the variety is one that produces big fruits,” Ms Mulongoti said.
She acquired skills in agriculture from Fisenge Centre for the Blind, where her husband used to work for the Zambia Agency for Persons with Disabilities (ZAPD).
What has worked for Ms Mulongoti is vocational rehabilitation, which could be the basis for inclusive development in relation to people with disabilities.
Like the Lusaka-based blind advocate for the rights of the disabled Elijah Ngwale who was recently hosted by President Edgar Lungu at State House, she is against the commercialisation of blind centres by the government.
She said knowledge from elderly blind people would not be transferred to young ones as a result of the commercialisation of blind centres.
“That front door of our house was made by a dumb person,” she explained. “He acquired those skills from the blind centre here in Fisenge.  That is the reason I am opposed to the commercialisation of blind centres. I even travelled to Lusaka to complain to higher government offices.”
Commercialisation, a prescription of the neo-liberal policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was seen as an option to the socialist model in which the disabled were organised in vocational training centres by first President Kenneth Kaunda’s government.
But the concept has led to the blind to lose of jobs and many have taken to the streets for handouts when some of them are highly skilled in agriculture and artworks such as production of furniture from rattan that was done at Ndola’s Kang’onga Centre for the Blind.
Quality materials like rattan furniture can be exported to earn the country foreign exchange.
Inclusive development, as a pillar for the emerging SDGs, knows no gender, child, disability or location such as urban, peri-urban, rural, Africa or Europe.
For a long time, the disabled have been excluded from development frameworks, which resulted in the weakness of the MDGs and inclusiveness should not remain on paper, but one of the realities of the emerging SDGs.
-Zambian Insight Feature Syndication.