What’s in a name? Acting on the sentiment of ‘Moyo Nua’.
The naming of Moyo Nua is something I am immensely proud of within this project. It succinctly illustrates the purpose of our work in two words — once you know what those two words actually mean. What surprises me, to the extent that I am sitting at my laptop writing about it, is how proud I am of the name, and the responsibility it places upon our shoulders to bring its ideals into reality.
In short, Moyo Nua is a dual-language term meaning ‘New Life’; Moyo meaning Life in Chewa (the language in Malawi), and Nua meaning New in Irish (the language of, well, Ireland). Despite the complexity of such a short name, sometimes mispronounced and often misspelled, it symbolises how our work focuses on the interdependent collaboration of ‘Developed’ countries (such as Ireland) and ‘Least Developed’ countries (also known as LDC’s, such as Malawi). It is work where the more I understand its role in this world, the more serious I get about it.
Right now, Moyo Nua makes and distributes handheld seed planters for smallholder farmers in Malawi; reducing labour intensity in farming, and increasing local trade in the five Territorial Areas (TAs) that we work in. This is possible in no short part from the help of GOAL Global, putting us on-the-ground in implementation, and our funders who are putting us off-the-ground in terms of starting up. To the often-raised eyebrows of the people I tell, I for one found the lockdown(s) to be beneficial, as we finally got to break through the barriers preventing Moyo Nua from launching, answering the existential questions that have plagued us for some time now. One of these questions was how Moyo Nua was going to be a functional success, instead of a glorified CSR machine.
An overwhelming fear of mine, over the past 18 months in particular, was that Moyo Nua would fall victim to becoming a project that had great intentions but, like other LDC-focused projects from ‘Developed’ universities, would ultimately fail due to lack of practicality and effort. In essence, I was scared (to the extent of paralysis in progress admittedly) that Moyo Nua was going to become one of the countless projects that get bountiful attention within the outdated (and BS) “Saving Africa” narrative, and never actually make a significant difference to people’s lives through pragmatic work.
Suffering from my self-diagnosed overthink-absolutely-everything syndrome, it was looking at the underlying message of the project name that brought clarity to the project’s mission. We are, quite simply, combining efforts between Ireland and Malawi to create effective change for smallholder farming communities in LDC’s. This simple mission acts as the anchor for all of our work; and holds us accountable to act on our word to deliver the change we believe we can make with as many people as possible. The understanding that has been developed of the name over this past while also acts as great tool in ignoring the (thankfully less prevalent) naysayers of the project. That, and the immense progress the project has made since this lockdown began, of course.
It’s something I never thought I would be as appreciative of, or indeed something that I would put as much thought into as I continue to do; but having the Moyo Nua name firmly in place (overtaking the original name concept of Project Gemini after the Greek tale of the Dioscuri, which I still adore) proudly conveys our efforts in being idealists in vision, and pragmatists in execution in our efforts across smallholder farming communities.
