The Government has pledged to support women in agribusiness, TechMagTV has established.
This was revealed by the Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Honourable Davis Marapira during the official launch of the Zimbabwe Women Agribusiness Network in Harare on Wednesday.
“Congratulations to Zimbabwe Women Agribusiness Network (ZWAN) for the successful launch of ZWAN, a Food festival networking platform for women in Agriculture, that showcases women’s empowerment, skill and talent in culinary art and farming,” said Hon, Marapira.
He noted that his ministry will continue to support women in agriculture through capacity building, further mainstreaming of gender-sensitive policies and legislation, Integrating gender issues into national and sectorial economic policies, national budget policies, programming and budgeting, which involves identification of gender issues, interventions, budget costing, and setting of performance benchmarks.
The ministry will also look at the prioritisation of resource allocation, disbursement and implementation of national and sectorial gender plans and programmes.
“Over the years more and more women have taken up representative positions in farming organisations at all levels and gained a greater voice as a result. We fully support women by ensuring that they have access to land ownership, financial inclusion and social protection,” he said.
A call for stakeholder support towards ZWAN initiatives was made for stakeholders in the agriculture sector to come on board to assist ZWAN in increasing their capacities, participation and access to finance, as well as working towards greater long-term resilience and development through projects which include borehole drilling in communities, community gardens, reviving irrigation schemes targeting female farmers and facilitating training to put an end to poverty and hunger, especially for women in rural areas.
“We must make progress towards the economic empowerment of rural women and work closely with stakeholders including seed houses, fertilizer companies, banks, civil society, academia, private and public sectors, and international agriculture communities.
Empowerment of women in agriculture will make it possible to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2-Zero Hunger by 2030, eradicating poverty which is an undesirable human aspect” he added.
Women farmers in business were drawn from different provinces of Zimbabwe.
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