Rural women farmers in South Africa: How global promises aren’t translating into support on the ground

It is well documented that women small-scale farmers are hard done by in an environment where they farm without security of tenure, which inhibits their ability to raise finance with which to grow their businesses.

Recent research adds another dimension to the challenges facing women small-scale farmers. Rural entrepreneurship researchers Sive Zintle Mbangiswano and Zamagebe Siphokazi Vuthela, with independent researcher and their mentor, Dr Elona Ndlovu, have found that even well-intentioned farming projects can leave women behind if they aren’t structured specifically to accommodate women

In their study of a citrus fruit project — a public-private partnership in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa — they found that women farmers did not benefit from the project as much as their male counterparts. The lead researcher, Sive Zintle Mbangiswano, explains.

What problems do Black rural women farmers face in the Eastern Cape?

Rural women small-scale farmers keep households and local markets going, yet many structural barriers limit their participation and growth. Insecure land rights and gender-blind institutions that treat everyone the same on paper but overlook women’s circumstances end up excluding them from the agriculture industry.

In many communal areas, women lack title deeds or joint ownership, so they can’t pledge land as collateral. Because of this, banks often assess women smallholders as “high risk”, and formal credit remains out of reach. Cooperative boards and agriculture programme committees are largely run by men. This reduces women’s voices in strategic decisions on inputs, pricing, training, and market access.

Information about extension and training services doesn’t always reach small-scale women farmers. When it does, training is typically once-off with little follow-up mentoring to apply new skills. Small-scale women farmers don’t always hear about grants either, and many rely on informal savings groups (stokvels) to finance their farms. This can be useful for liquidity but is not enough for larger investments. In South Africa, a stokvel borrowing history also doesn’t contribute to the women farmer’s credit profile — and this is what formal financial institutions review during a loan evaluation process.

These problems interact: weak land tenure blocks finance; limited finance prevents women from growing their farms, and exclusion from leadership prevents women from making reforms that would fix both. The net effect is a structural glass ceiling that keeps women-run agribusinesses small and their voices quiet.

What did the citrus project aim to achieve and did it succeed?

One of the ways that the government has tried to help small-scale women farmers solve these problems is by partnering them with commercial farms. For example, on some farms, former farm workers are given 75 per cent of the shares of a new farm, with the other 25 per cent held by citrus companies who then transfer their skills.

We studied an Eastern Cape citrus-sector public–private partnership. Its aim was to support emerging citrus farmers to sell their oranges commercially, and provide them with packhouses to use for storing and packing their fruit. It didn’t look at securing title deeds to land for women or helping them put up collateral.

We interviewed women farmers who were part of the citrus partnership and compared the project’s official reports with six years of research into what was actually happening on the ground.

Our research found that the project helped both men and women farmers to develop better technical skills in growing citrus. The farmers also said they received more support on their farms — before and after harvesting. Some managed to export citrus, boosting their incomes.

However, the women farmers did not benefit as much as men. For example, the women farmers had no real influence, because they weren’t chosen to take up voting seats on co-op boards or the public private partnership steering group. They had no authority over budgets and procurement. They didn’t get to choose trainees or play a role in negotiating supply contracts.

Our research found that the gains women farmers made in training didn’t translate into equal control over resources or markets. This means that even well-intentioned programmes can miss the mark if they are designed as gender neutral, overlooking the specific problems affecting women.

How does this match up to the global promises made to women farmers?

We looked at the G20 Women’s Empowerment track and the private-sector Women’s Empowerment Principles. We also studied the G20 Development agenda.

We found a disconnect between high-level policy and on-the-ground reality. For example, the G20’s Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion has issued concrete guidance for supporting women, youth and small businesses. Yet for this to happen on the ground requires improved internet connectivity, trusted local agents who know how to support women farmers, providing loans that don’t require land deeds, and reporting the results for women and men separately. These support measures aren’t always in place.

What needs to happen next?

Making sure that rural women, small scale Eastern Cape farmers have equal access to finance isn’t just about fairness — it’s key to household welfare and rural prosperity. When women gain financial tools and assets, families benefit through better food security and wellbeing.

In the Eastern Cape, where poverty and food insecurity are high, empowering women agripreneurs could significantly boost local development and food supply. There’s a gap between a woman tending her field in a small Eastern Cape village like Lusikisiki and policymakers drafting G20 communiqués. Closing this gap is challenging but achievable. Government agriculture programmes must have targets and quotas for how many women they will empower, data showing how the different genders are doing and women must have decision-making roles.

The government must track how many women get loans, training, and leadership posts. The results must be published, and steps taken to improve support for women. Improving laws helps women farmers get more access to finance.

South Africa should lead by example within the G20 and match strong approaches in the rest of the world. These include India’s self-help groups, where women pool their finances. Today there are 14 of these groups in every village, with 100 million women in India as members.

Indonesia’s women-centred group lending, and Brazil’s programme for strengthening family farming could also work in South Africa. West Africa also has successful women-led cooperatives, savings groups and group-guarantee finance.

South Africa’s policies for women in agriculture must align with the G20’s guidelines on financially including women small-scale farmers. Encouraging women’s leadership is very important. It helps dismantle stereotypes, and in patriarchal rural settings this shifts norms, inspires younger women, and improves decisions that benefit whole agricultural value chains.

Sive Zintle Mbangiswano, Lecturer in the Entrepreneurship Development Unit and co-ordinator of the Student Women Economic Empowerment Programme (SWEEP), Faculty of Management Sciences, Central University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.