Southern Alliance For Indigenous Resources-SAFIRE

02/06/2026

Resilient communities are built when local people have the knowledge, structures, and confidence to shape their own future.
In May, the Building Resilience for Vulnerable Communities (BRFVC) Project reached community members, local leaders, government extension officers, and frontline service providers across Bulilima and Mangwe districts through community-led Disaster Risk Reduction planning and food and nutrition security sensitization, Training of Trainers sessions,.
In Bulilima Ward 21 alone, 50 community representatives came together to validate their ward's Disaster Risk Reduction Plan, ensuring that local knowledge and priorities shape how their community prepares for and responds to climate shocks.
When communities are food-secure and prepared for risk, they can focus on what comes next: managing their land, restoring their ecosystems, and building livelihoods that last. That connection between human resilience and thriving landscapes is at the core of everything SAFIRE does. Thanks to our friends and partners, Zimbabwe

01/06/2026

Last week, SAFIRE joined project partners and government stakeholders from Bikita and Chiredzi districts at a Nature-based Solutions (NbS) workshop convened by IUCN in Masvingo, as part of the CBA-SCALE+ SA project.
The workshop deepened participants' understanding of the core principles underpinning effective NbS and what it actually takes to design and implement interventions that work. For our team, two highlights stood out.
First, gaining a clearer framework for assessing the effectiveness of nature-based solutions and moving beyond good intentions to evidence-based evaluation. Second, hands-on exposure to the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM), a practical tool for identifying and prioritising areas with the highest potential for restoration.
In landscapes like Bikita and Chiredzi, where communities are already living with the consequences of land degradation and climate variability, this kind of technical grounding matters. It sharpens our ability to support interventions that are not just well-meaning, but well-designed. Thank you to Zimbabwe CARE Zimbabwe Cesvi Onlus ICRISAT

29/05/2026

This month we are shining our spotlight on Rigison Nyashanu, our Project Officer who is on the frontlines of SAFIRE's land restoration and climate resilience work under the ECOTERRA Project.

Through his work, communities in Chiredzi are gaining the knowledge and confidence to adopt sustainable land management practices, protect natural resources, and lead their own climate resilience initiatives. He ensures that project interventions are owned and not just delivered.

20/05/2026

Happy Bees are vital catalysts for both biodiversity and local economies. At SAFIRE, we firmly believe that sustainable, nature-based enterprises, like honey production are key to building resilient rural livelihoods.
Protecting bees means protecting food systems, ecosystems, and the communities that depend on them. Every step taken today was a reminder that conservation is everyone's race.

19/05/2026

Last Friday, the CBA-SCALE SA+ project team, together with partners from Forestry, AGRITEX and MWACSMED, conducted an ecological survey in Ward 20, Chiredzi and visited several homesteads to appreciate community-led innovations around household nurseries, agroforestry, and local processing initiatives. The visit revealed encouraging opportunities to scale up household nurseries, with women already propagating indigenous species such as nyii and baobab using locally available methods. Across the ward, communities are integrating valuable agroforestry species including masawu, nyii and baobab into their landscapes. This demonstrates how local knowledge can contribute to both ecosystem restoration and livelihood resilience.
By strengthening community capacities around sustainable natural resource management and supporting nature-based enterprises, SAFIRE under the CBA-SCALE Southern Africa+ continues to work toward its goal of strengthening local communities to restore, manage and sustainably benefit from thriving ecosystems.
Thriving ecosystems. Resilient communities. Sustainable livelihoods.
CARE Zimbabwe

18/05/2026

Yesterday, SAFIRE participated in the 2026 Nyuki Marathon in Harare. Before the race, our Executive Director Estella Toperesu explained why we were there and the reasoning is deeper than just a morning run.
Bees sit at the centre of SAFIRE's work in ways that are easy to overlook until someone points them out.
In the communities we serve, honey is one of the most accessible and high-value non-timber forest products families depend on. Beekeeping is low-cost, low-impact, and directly tied to the health of the surrounding landscape. A community earning income from honey has a living, breathing incentive to keep the trees standing because without the trees, there is no nectar, no honey, and no income.
That is the benefit-driven conservation model SAFIRE has built its work on for over 30 years. We do not ask communities to protect forests out of obligation. We work to ensure that intact forests are worth more to a family than cleared ones.
Bees make that argument better than we ever could.

18/05/2026

Last Friday we held an initial engagement meeting with Marondera University Of Agricultural Sciences And Technology
The meeting was an opportunity to understand each other's work, identify areas of shared interest and begin mapping out what a formal collaboration could look like. MUAST's research strengths in agroecology, environmental science, sustainable land management and community extension align closely with SAFIRE's three strategic goals: promoting sustainable livelihoods through nature-based enterprises, ecological restoration, and strengthening local institutions.
What struck us most was the mutual recognition that transformative change in Zimbabwe's rural landscapes requires both rigorous science and genuine community partnership.
We look forward to formalising this relationship through a Memorandum of Understanding in the coming months.
Thank you to the MUAST team for the engagement. We are looking forward to what we can build together.

18/05/2026

Big shout out to my newest top fans! 💎 Isheanesu Mafuratidze, Fortune Mtetwa, Ruwimbo Sabeta, Rigison Nyashanu, Sharon Rose, Colen Takundwa

Drop a comment to welcome them to our community, fans

14/05/2026

This Sunday, Southern Alliance For Indigenous Resources-SAFIRE will be participating in the Nyuki Marathon and we could not be more proud to be there. The theme this year is "One Bee, Million Futures." We have seen that future up close.
In communities across Zimbabwe honey is one of the most important non-timber forest products our communities harvest and sell. But bees do far more than produce honey. They pollinate the wild fruit trees like baobab and marula that communities depend on for food and income. They are indicators of forest health. Where bees thrive, forests tend to be intact. Where bees disappear, something is going wrong in the landscape.
This is exactly why SAFIRE's approach to conservation has always been benefit-driven. We do not ask communities to protect forests out of sentiment. A standing forest full of flowering trees, wild fruits and healthy soils is worth more alive than cleared. Bees are part of that argument.
When a community earns income from honey, they have a direct, tangible reason to protect the trees that make that honey possible. That is how conservation becomes sustainable, through livelihoods.
See you on the course on Sunday. Running for the bees. Running for the forests. Running for the communities who depend on both.

Lace up, Harare! 🏃🏾‍♂️🇿🇼
*NYUKI MARATHON* — 17 MAY 2026
National Sports Stadium

Kids Run | 5KM | 10KM | 21KM | 42KM
Registration $20 → http://sahwigate.com

*ONE BEE, MILLION FUTURES* 🐝
Run for the bees. Run for the future.

14/05/2026

The effects of climate change are not abstract. They show up in dried-up boreholes, failed harvests, and degraded land that once fed families.
Last year, SAFIRE worked with communities across Manicaland, Masvingo, and Matabeleland South to push back against that reality.
More than 29,000 trees were planted, 2,000 hectares of land were restored, six community natural resource governance structures were established, and more than 3,600 farmers adopted sustainable natural resource management practices.
But what drives these numbers is not infrastructure alone. It is communities taking ownership of their land, water, and local institutions. Women leading nurseries. Farmers moving from subsistence to enterprises
SAFIRE’s approach has always been to build from the inside out. We are investing in skills, institutions, and local knowledge that outlast any project cycle.