VALUE4HER, an Africa-wide programme aimed at improving the performance of women’s agribusinesses with the ultimate goal of increasing their incomes, is poised to boost Rwandan women’s enterprises.
The programme seeks to increase the value of women’s agribusinesses through addressing challenges like market access, knowledge, skills and networks, and global advocacy which are considered major barriers for women in agriculture.
Other barriers include lack of access to finance and investments.
The VALUE4HER programme is powered by VALUE4HERConnect, which is under Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
VALUE4HER Connect is a digital marketplace for women in agribusiness offering integrated business solutions to women agri-enterprises.
The platform enhances visibility of women agribusinesses, helps them build collective capital and networks across the continent, while facilitating easier connections with buyers, financiers, and other business service providers, according to officials.
During the VALUE4HER in-country networking and advocacy meeting held in Kigali on Friday, May 21, which was conducted in a hybrid format (with some participants attending physically, others online), participants commended it as a platform primed to advance women’s agribusiness.
High-profile participants at the event included Gerardine Mukeshimana, the Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources; Jeannette Bayisenge, Minister of Gender and Family Promotion; and Rosemary Mbabazi, Minister of Youth and Culture.
Others are Agnes Kalibata, President of AGRA, Peter Vrooman, U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda, and Clare Akamanzi, CEO of Rwanda Development Board (RDB).
Why VALUE4HER matters
According to the African Development Bank, women in Africa face a financing gap of an estimated $42 billion across business value chains, including $15.6 billion in agriculture alone.
Some of the reasons for the low financing for women’s agribusinesses include that they are perceived as riskier because they often do not have collaterals or guarantees, face prohibitive interest rates and they are mostly operating in the informal sector which falls short of commercial banks’ requirements.
Minister Mukeshimana said that women account for nearly 50 percent of the agricultural workforce, pointing out that they are a key pillar of Africa’s food security and wealth creation ecosystem.
Mukeshimana said that in Rwanda, there are 2.1 million agriculture households, 28 percent of which are headed by women, but indicated that only 18.6 percent of them are fully engaged in market-oriented agribusinesses.
"That pushes us to fully support any initiative that is aimed at getting women more engaged in agribusinesses, while making them more economically active,” she said, commending the AGRA’s platform and urging women to take advantage of it.
Dido Sabdiyo, the Head of Gender and Inclusiveness at AGRA said that the platform is important because there are a series of structural challenges when it comes to women accessing services such as finance, market, and technical and business management capacity among others.
"This platform makes every woman’s company visible digitally. If you go online, you will see a portrait of a woman and the description of her business,” she said, indicating that the contacts are also provided.
Lack of access to finance, Sabdiyo said, is the biggest challenge facing women in agribusiness.
"That is why one of the pillars of the platform is a ‘Woman2Finance’ or capital or investment. And, we do this in various ways. One is that the platform is starting to register financing partners that want to finance women’s agribusinesses. When they are registered on the platform, it’s easy for women to just link up,” she said.
Sharon Akanyana, founder of Ishyo Foods, a local agro-processing company that processes fruits and vegetables into jam and juices, said that women who own small agribusinesses are constrained by lack of access to funding to grow their enterprises.
Talking about the importance of this platform, she said that it will help in building connections with other women and sharing experience, as well as responding to the financing needs of women agripreneurs.
"There are still gaps in agro-processing. We need quality products that will be able to compete with the imported ones. And for us to achieve such quality, there has to be quality machinery, which is costly,” she said, calling for ways to make those machines easily accessible such as through getting them on credit and paying in installments.
So far, 758 women-led agribusinesses from 36 countries in Africa are registered on the platform.
Gerardine Mukeshimana, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources speaking during the VALUE4HER networking and advocacy event in Kigali, Friday, May 21, 2021. / Jean-Pierre Mazimpaka for MINAGRI
Some participants during the VALUE4HER networking and advocacy event in Kigali, Friday, May 21, 2021. The programme seeks to make women's agribusinesses more profitable. / Jean-Pierre Mazimpaka for MINAGRI
Photo: Dan Nsengiyuma