Women bemoan exclusion from farming, loans

Source: Women bemoan exclusion from farming, loans | The Financial Gazette August 24, 2017

WOMEN constitute a minority in farming and continue to struggle for access to funding and training opportunities, an agriculture trust has said.
Women Farmers, Land and Agriculture Trust (WFLA Trust) executive president, Phides Mazhawidza, told The Financial Gazette recently that financial institutions were not keen to lend money to women farmers because most of them do not have immovable assets demanded by banks.

“They are not gender sensitive in their demand for collateral because they do not consider that most women do not have fixed property in their names. For married women they demand that you produce a marriage certificate and that the husband signs the loan form as guarantor,” she said.
She added that this deprived women freedom of choice and independence.

Further noting that the few women who have access to funding end up being sued for defaulting on loan repayments and losing their properties in the process, Mazhawidza blamed government for failing to enact clear policies that promote women’s economic emancipation.

Statistics provided by WFLA show that out of 145 775 people who were allocated land during the government’s land reform exercise, only 26 240 were women, constituting 18 percent.

“Despite the fact that women constitute 52 percent of the national population, 80 000 of them own land and 70 percent of agriculture labour is provided by women. Most programmes like the Development of Agriculture Policy Framework 2012-2032, Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme which compelled all stakeholders to realign their programs and funding to the Zimbabwe Agriculture Investment plan and advocating for the modernisation and commercialisation of agriculture policy have been carried out without targeting women,” she said.

Efforts to reach Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Minister, Joseph Made were fruitless.
Agriculture deputy minister, Paddy Zhanda, said he was not in a position to comment.
“I cannot talk about that, please find Minister Made because his office is responsible for all policy issues,” he said.

Head of micro-finance and consumer loans at the CBZ Bank, Handson Maeresera, said banking institutions do not discriminate against women, but instead assessed the project’s viability before granting credits.
“It is the norm that when most farmers approach financial institutions for credit they do so as a family, with women being a part and parcel of the projects. We then assess the viability of the project and it is on such pretexts that credit is granted or denied hence the entire process is not based on gender,” he said.