Sowing seeds of resilience in Namibia

In the remote village of Okakwiyu, where the wind carries the scent of tilled earth and the calls of livestock, 31-year-old Elise Amadhila is reshaping her life one crop, and one animal, at a time.

It has been a sometimes back-breaking effort. Located in Namibia’s Oshikoto region, Okakwiyu is among the many northern villages affected by an El Niño-induced drought that ravaged the country over the past three years. Yet, despite the odds, Amadhila has transformed this sandscape into a flourishing, vegetable-filled paradise.

Today, she’s raising livestock and, more recently, growing crops — thanks to a project supported by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Kingdom. Launched in 2025, the project aims to improve maternal and child nutrition by giving dozens of smallholder farmers agricultural training and equipment to grow healthier, hardier food.

“I wanted to help my family by providing them with a healthier diet like carrots, to support their eyesight, and cabbage, to aid digestion,” Amadhila says.

Born and raised in Okakwiyu, Amadhila graduated university with a bachelor’s degree (honours) in higher primary education, specializing in natural science and mathematics. She hoped to be a teacher. But limited job opportunities pushed her in an unexpected direction: agriculture.

“Agriculture is just a fulfilling occupation,” Amadhila says, “It’s self-employment, and it doesn’t cost much, all you need is to apply your mind and work hard.”

Seeing several of her neighbours raise chickens planted the first seeds of inspiration. What started off with a few hens gradually grew into a modest animal farm, which now includes pigs and pigeons. Amadhila finds joy not only in the meat and eggs her animals provide, but also in the daily interactions with them.

Rising food prices and the burden of travelling long distances to buy ever-pricier vegetables inspired her to start growing crops. “Sometimes, you just want to make a salad for lunch, but it’s simply too expensive,” she says.

Now Amadhila’s salads are made with her own greens. Spinach and cabbage, but also carrots and onions sprout from her fields, turning her homestead into a blossoming agricultural haven.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing. Poor soil fertility, limited water access, and early struggles with seed germination nearly pushed her to give up. The years of punishing drought made things worse.

“I was about to stop farming, but I used what I learned from the training and tried using organic fertilizer and that’s when everything started growing,” she says of the WFP-UK project.

Through the support of WFP and the United Kingdom, Amadhila and 30 other participating farmers received vital agricultural inputs, including pesticides and seeds. They also received training on composting, soil analysis, food preservation, safe pesticide use — and how to use shade nets and irrigation equipment efficiently. Together, these assets and skills have saved precious water, kept pests at bay, enriched soil fertility and boosted their harvests.

Now, Amadhila’s horticultural project isn’t just feeding her mother and her two nieces, it’s laying the groundwork for a bigger vision. She plans to expand her business, planting more crops and eventually selling them to local schools.

Instead of a classroom, Amadhila’s horticultural project has become her new lecture hall, a place where resilience, innovation, and purpose grow side by side. In a world where many wait for opportunities to knock, she built her own path with determination, compost, care — and a whole lot of chickens.