Graça Machel has called on civil society organizations to organise smallholder farmers into associations for them to support one another and apply a gender-lens approach to benefit women.
Mrs. Machel said this on 29 July 2020, during a Society Talk public Webinar hosted by the Southern Africa Trust. The session was organised in corroboration with the Graça Machel Trust, Mandela Institute for Development Studies (MINDS) and Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI), under the theme COVID-19 Impact on SADC Food Systems and Smallholder Agriculture, and Policy Options for Women- Inclusion Response.
Civil society organisations and development partners comprising of thought leaders, researchers and subject matter experts in policy and development sectors across Southern Africa engaged in solutions for food security and addressed challenges faced by smallholder farmers, particularly women in agribusiness in Southern Africa due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In her capacity as Founder of the Graça Machel Trust and Chair of Mandela Institute for Development Studies, Mrs Graça Machel shared her thoughts on policy interventions she wishes to be implemented to address the challenges faced by smallholder farmers in the region. She mentioned how COVID-19 pandemic has forced everyone to look at the realities of social and economic inequalities which must now be mitigated.
“ Without lockdowns, I don’t know if we would have had the movements governments have taken to organise themselves, to dig deep and find resources to provide for vulnerable families, the unemployed, and people living with disabilities. We have been forced to acknowledge, act, mitigate and re-think our practices, strategies and policies.” – Graça Machel.
Mrs. Machel spoke about the issues around food scarcity in the SADC region which also require regional responses, making mention of high levels of malnutrition, stunting, climate change, draughts, inadequate government policies, lack of investment in smallholder farmers and marginalisation of women specifically when it comes to access to knowledge, information technology, capital finances and weak organisational capacity which continue to exist.
“We are conscious that women have no voices in decision-making bodies. We try to talk about it but we have not taken active approaches that impose women in decision making bodies. Only then, we will be able to deal with issues of inequalities and injustices” – Graça Machel.
She added that women are crucial to food security. Statistics indicate clearly that about 80% of food is produced by women, adding, “with all the human suffering that COVID19 has brought, we can look at the pandemic as an opportunity because it is shaking our consciousness and lack of solidarity to take care of one another.”
Mrs. Machel urged civil society organisations to work together to find solutions. “This is a good sign that we are listening to the suffering of our people, we are aware that we have a very important role to play, and because of that we have to organise ourselves”, she said.
“We know and we are ready to remind our governments that it is their primary responsibility to ensure that every single citizen in SADC region does not go to bed hungry. It is their obligation to make sure that the issue of people not having food must come to an end. It means we are here to organise ourselves to tell our government that- NO hunger in this region.” – Graça Machel.
Addressing interventions to increase food security
The session was moderated by Bronwyn Nielsen, Founder and CEO, The Nielsen Network. She engaged the panellists who addressed key policy interventions required for SADC to tackle some of the challenges.
Giving a broader assessment of food systems and intersections in food security, Dr Ruth Hall of Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) said strengthening food production by itself is not going to solve the food crisis in our region.
“We have a crisis in our food system that extends far beyond the amount of food that is produced. The problem relates to how input industries control inputs and pricing, and how difficult it is for people who are poor to access these. It has to do with the enclosure and privatisation of land, water and seeds. It relates to how value chains work, how relationships between market actors [sic] relate to the degree in which supermarkets, big retail and big food manufactures control the system.”- Dr Ruth Hall.
Elizabeth Swai of African Women in Agri-business Academy gave an overview of the challenges smallholder farmers are facing. She said women are game changers and have the capacity to come up with business models that involve smallholder farmers.
“It is all about thinking differently, we should not only think as feminists only, but women who have an agenda in business development, which also has a lot to do with capacity building at individual level… this will break the barrier of how we think and do things. ”- Elizabeth Swai.
Contributing on how we can support local products, Beatrice Makwenda of Rural Women’s Assembly said in Malawi, COVID 19 came when smallholder farmers were in the process of harvesting, organising and preparing for markets.
“The triple challenges women face were exacerbated… it is really challenging for women farmers even in rural communities that the normal ways of accessing their means of livelihood and income had taken a different shape. We had to engage to say markets still had to work even in the face of the pandemic.”- Beatrice Makwenda.
Domingos Gove of SADC Food, Agriculture & Natural Resources Directorate said COVID-19 has brought a backdrop in food security in the region due to disruption of cross border transport.
“Before lockdown, we had about 41.2 million Southern Africans that were food secure, and this figure is the highest in a decade.”- Domingos Gove.
According to the Synthesis Report recently released by SADC Secretariat, it was estimated that close to 30% of the SADC population will be food secure.
Watch full session here
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