Keep calm! African women will feed the world. So says the home page of the Women who farm Africa website. Co-founded by three young African woman, this organisation is designed to empower rural women farmers in Africa. CEO, Ruramiso Mashumba, from Zimbabwe, recalls her grandmother planting and tending crops in order to feed her children
As a farmer herself and the first female youth Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) Mashumba is optimistic about the future of farming in Africa. She and her co-founders, Slyvia Tawiah Tetteh from Ghana and Sussana Teriza Phiri from Zambia aim to equip 1 million rural female farmers in Africa to scale up their agricultural projects to commercially viable enterprises and train 20 000 women by 2060. These three young women met at the Alliance for Science Global Leadership Fellows Program in the US. They soon realised that many of the challenges they faced in their native countries were very similar.
“Women have been working the land for centuries in Africa” says Mashumba. But for many, especially small, rural farmers, who eek a living out of the land, it’s far from easy. Farming on a commercial level takes large amounts of capital investment. For many young people, especially young women in the rural areas, this is simply not available. Mashumba draws a distinction between what she terms “commercial farmers and communal farmers”. Women farmers in Zimbabwe have typically fallen into the latter group. Commercial farming is typically dominated by men.
Determined to farm
Ruramiso Mashumba grew up in Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare but when she was fourteen, her father bought a non-commercial farm an hour outside of the city. Mashumba started attending a nearby school that taught commercial agriculture. One of only three girls in a class of fifty, she was bullied by the male students and teased for dressing like a boy. However, two years later, she and her two female classmates graduated top of their class. “Despite how hard it was, I was determined not to give up,” says Mashumba. She later went on to study a degree in Agriculture and Business in the UK.
Yet Mashumba’s passion for community came from her mother. A development worker, who worked with rural women in Zimbabwe and other African countries, her mother’s dedication to improving the lives of others, inspired Mashumba to do the same using agriculture. When she completed her studies in the UK, she returned to Zimbabwe. Her goal: to turn the farm inherited from her father into a commercial venture. However, she was unable to secure a loan from the bank due to her age, sex and lack of collateral.
Cabbages and king onions.
“I sat down and cried” admits the young farmer. But all was not lost. Her mother took her savings that she had set aside to buy a car and told her daughter to go out and “conquer the world”. Mashumba never looked back. The first commercial crops she planted were cabbages, oilseed vegetables, and king onions. The young woman ascribes her success both to her agricultural knowledge as well as the business skills that she had studied.
“Farmers” asserts Mashumba, “need to earn an income. Farming is a business for them, like anything else”. She initially grew crops for local sale but margins were low and it was difficult to make a profit. However, the following year she was contracted by a local producer to grow snap peas for export to the European Union. She became their first female farmer and their first grower under thirty. Mashumba used the money she earned here to further mechanize her farm. Indeed mechanization is something about which the young farmer talks a lot.
Small farmers need access to machinery
“Mechanisation can clearly help make farming in Africa a lot more productive but many small farmers cannot afford it.” The combination of climate change and growing demand for food worldwide, means that margins are low and small communal farmers struggle to make ends meet. The implementation of irrigation systems – Zimbabwe has suffered from drought for a number of years now, solar panels – power supply is erratic. Tractors and mechanised planting devices are also important. Yet all are expensive.
With the creation of Women who farm Africa (Mnandi Africa), Mashumba decided to use Chomwedzi Farm as a training centre for rural women farmers. The organisation also hires out equipment such as tractors and planting devices to small farmers who need them only at certain times of the year. They provide training for rural farmers on how to use the equipment as well as other good agronomic practices such as choosing the right types of seed for increasingly dry conditions as well as climate information.
“Climate change is here to stay”
“It’s evident that climate change is here and it’s here to stay. This makes farming harder and harder” says Mashumba. One solution, is a greater focus on precision farming in Zimbabwe. This involves taking a more scientific approach to crop cultivation in order to optimise yields with the resources available. Through her work with the Zimbabwe Farmer’s Union (ZFU), Mashumba is involved with government-based projects like Phumvudza (meaning Master Farmers’ Revolution). Using conservation farming techniques to optimise the use of small pieces of land, the project provides subsidies to young farmers.
As youth chairperson of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, Mashumba says that interest in farming from young people is, “huge”. “Ten years ago there was so much negativity around it” she admits. But social media has really helped to spread knowledge and positive stories about it. During Covid, large conferences like the Zimbabwe Youth “Agriprenuership” Summit were also organised online, making it more accessible for those youth living in less accessible parts of the country.
Coming up with our own solutions
This young female farmer is optimistic about the future of farming in Africa. “The future is bright” she says, because Africa is now coming up with her own solutions. For other young farmers, Mashumba has the following message: “Never get tired of thinking of crazy ideas, because those crazy ideas can often help support a lot of people out there!”