Women in Agriculture Entrepreneurship-Demand Funding

By Sally Mulambya

Known as primary caregivers to families and communities, women provide food and nutrition and are the link between the farm and the table. However, very few women have risen up to broaden their involvement in agriculture as majority practice it on a small scale mainly for subsistence purposes.

According to research women produce60-80 percent of the world’s food and they are inherently better stewards of the environment than men.

Unfortunately, majority of these primary caregivers do not receive the same support as men farmers who have more access to farming inputs such as land, fertilizer and financial services such as loans. feeling neglected in the agriculture sector women from various sectors of society have appealed to government and other financial lending institutions to actively consider women farmers.

And for this reason that women from various sectors of society have come together to launch an organization called WAHN aimed at increasing women’s knowledge and skills in the Agriculture sector, in order to increase the participation of women farmers in agriculture Women in Agriculture for Healthy Nations (WAHN) conducted a mentorship program.

Mailes Mukambo an attendee of the mentorship program said the programme was an opportunity to enhance her knowledge in Agriculture and appealed to various stakeholders to emulate such initiatives.

“Genuine support to us women farmers has a potential to unleash hundreds of millions which can effectively reduce poverty and hunger, government needs to work towards addressing social barriers that prevent us from accessing critical farming inputs and financial assistance because I feel we are greatly excluded,” she said.

She further advised women to consider venturing into Agriculture to become financially independent and appealed to government and other institutions to consider allocating resources specifically to women and support the participation of women farmers in the budget decision making processes.

Martina Mukonkela is one of the many women in the agriculture sector rearing village chickens full-time that attended the training and has done exceptionally well at it despite facing various challenges on a daily basis.

“I first started with broilers but with time I noticed a huge demand for village chickens, customers would come saying ‘nifuna nkuku yaku Munzi’ this made me decide to do away with broilers and rear village chickens,” she narrated.

Mrs. Mukonkela said it is quite expensive to manage her business because she is unable to purchase necessary requirements to continue with her business as prices of feed on the market have gone up.

“For village chickens to look attractive you don’t need to let them roam or scavenge so you need to confine them so we are forced to buy village chicken feed which is very expensive, we make our feed by going to livestock services where we get the ingredients from because we don’t want to feed them inorganic substances, you know people opt for village chickens because they are natural and chemical free,” she said.

The village chickens are strictly fed on grains, soya and sun flower cake but if you compare the price at which we sell village

“If we had a way we would have asked these people that sale feed to reduce the prices however, we equally understand that they are in business,” she said.  

However, according to Ms. Mwakalombe the biggest challenge that most women in agriculture face is lack of funding to expand their businesses according to the poultry farmer the only way to make profit in Agriculture is investment of time and finances.

“giving us loans or financial assistance will secure not only our businesses but the future as well, it can also be in form of infrastructure, there seems to be a very significant gap, I believe investment needs to be balanced if the sector is to grow,” she said.

She added that success in agriculture was through growing quality products because finding a market is not a problem and urged farmers to take time to produce quality products consistently.  

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