BY OWETHU DLAMINI
MBABANE – EmaSwati women are increasingly becoming interested in the agricultural sector.
The Woman Farmer Foundation recently launched a Woman in Agriculture Empowerment Programme (WAEP) which was launched on November 3, 2022. The programme sought to focus on capacity building and the economic spending of women farmers among other aspects.
According to Ayanda Nkambule, Programmes Coordinator at Woman Farmers Foundation, the training under WAEP began yesterday and would be taking place across all four regions in the country.
“Yesterday, we were in the Lubombo region and we had 20 women participating in the training. What is set to take place is that 20 women will be participating in the training in each of the four regions in the country. Basically, during these training sessions we teach the women about finances, record keeping, access to markets, how to farm market land enterprises, the integration of climate change and gender inequity into the agricultural sector,” said Nkambule.
She further noted that the women were not being trained from grass root level and how they were already established farmers. Nkambule mentioned that the training helped in accelerating them into getting into the scope that was needed in the country to achieve agenda 2030 which looked at food security in Eswatini through the production of food.
“We want to improve the women’s livelihoods and we are also working towards the betterment of our country and rural women in Eswatini. We hope to achieve an impact that will allow the women to be more prone to making decisions because we believe that if they are economically strengthened, then they can make decisions that better impact and empower them to be better women and survivors,” said Nkambule.
Nkambule stated that the selection criteria was based on women that had joined the competition because they had certain assessment tools that enabled them to gauge the gap regarding where they needed to be assisted hence the particular women were selected.
The programmes coordinator stated that the women who were partaking in the training were so far happy with the information they were getting and what they were learning.
