Are women participating fully in all opportunities – including import and export – that currently exist in agriculture? Ntuthu Mbiko, a farmer with various leadership and development roles, shares her thoughts.
It is no secret that globally, women are the backbone of agriculture. Yet women are largely undeveloped and excluded from key decision-making processes, land distribution, targeted finance models and market access.
Each of these barriers is not only delaying our economic empowerment but further deepens the existing societal inequalities and also affects our living conditions on a patriarchal society.
Firstly, the critical barrier is the absence of a clear and common understanding of what it means to develop not just all women in South Africa, but previously disadvantaged individuals. This makes it extremely challenging to actually develop women in the context of South Africa.
We ought to appreciate that women are not homogeneous due to various factors such as location, culture, age, religion etc.
This can be achieved through an evidence based targeted and action-oriented approach that should provide us with clear need analysis that is location, weather patterns, arable capability, and commodity driven by the market demand.
Target the thorny issues of funding and land
In order to understand the conversation around financing women in agriculture, one should reflect on how women have been funded and establish if there has been a glaring success.
Regrettably there hasn’t been much of a good story to tell. Therefore, the need for a targeted funding model that will appreciate various dynamics of opening up the sector to women is long overdue. This should also entail a tailor made pre and post interventions component. The absence of such a funding model questions our deliberate effort to achieve the much desired women inclusion.
We also need to tap on our abilities to crowd our own efforts and resources and create our own funding. It is with such initiatives that we will be able approach funding institutions with a different approach with no begging hand.
It is when we are able to harness our ability to save and invest as a collective that we would engage other stakeholders on a different basis, as partners, as opposed to beneficiaries. This on its own is a major shift in power dynamics.
Land access and I mean sizeable land access becomes one of the critical enablers and Minister Thoko Didiza announced a 50% allocation of government land to women. So there are targeted efforts to address this issues. However, unresolved land tenure issues and land zoning are still a challenge in rural and semi urban areas.
Many women still finding their feet
The Agriculture and Agro-Processing Master Plan (AAMP) provides us with a clear framework on how best to develop and transform to achieve this inclusive growth for the benefit of inclusive growth.
The Women Economic Assembly (Wecona) has crafted a gender inclusion framework focusing on women for more than 12 sectors, including the agricultural sector, which I am leading.
This exercise has enabled us to engage various stakeholders and begin to understand the actual revenue streams for each value chain component. By value chain, I am referring to inter and intra farming activities. In essence, whilst on farm activities are crucial, there are other important aspects beyond the farm gate where we are not involved.
These are more lucrative and range from auctions, manufacturing and supply of fertilisers, agro-processing, creation and stimulation of markets and all other exciting aspects of agribusiness. It is so while we are still trying to find our feet on the periphery of these value chains.
Sweet sound of success
There are, however, some success stories. Women under the African Farmers Association Of South Africa in the Eastern Cape chaired by Sheila Hlanjwa, have secured livestock export opportunities in partnership with the Eastern Cape Development Corporation to the United Arab Emirates. This ground breaking partnership just witnessed its shipment of 50 000 live sheep through the East London port.
Hlanjwa has also managed to secure export opportunities for the beef market to China in partnership with the Buffalo City Municipality, a woman-led metro. This demonstrates how women can achieve more if they are provided platforms to lead.
Getting women ready for the future
We need a society that is prepared to accept that women are not only contributors of labour force – more than 50% – but also can be equal partners at equity level in all the components of the value chain.
Simple logic says you have more than half of the population that is not being capacitated to be equal role players of the entire economy. Who’s fooling who? In essence, it simply demonstrates our lack of desire as a country to have a growing economy by excluding this big chunk of the population.
What’s also needed is a society that understands that as a girl child evolves to be a young woman, she might not necessarily follow the normal societal route, however, she has every right to focus on her business ambitions without being harshly and unfairly judged.
The question we should be asking ourselves is: Are women ready to exploit exports opportunities of $12.8 billion and import opportunities of $6.3 billion currently available?
There is something that seems to be going on in as far as women participation. The keenness is there but with no baseline we can never measure this participation.
Given the value of the export market, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.
- Ntuthu Mbikois a farmer with leadership and development roles in various organisations in South Africa’s agricultural sector and internationally. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Food For Mzansi.
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