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Stacey Tariro Gatsi

The Zimbabwe Agricultural Development Trust (ZADT) has urged women and youths to join their project, Causeway, which seeks to assist them access finance training and mentorship and link them with financial institutions.

ZADT’s efforts will complement Government’s thrust to achieve Vision 2030 of an empowered and prosperous upper middle-income society that accommodates all citizens and places. ZADT is a non-profit agricultural finance institution, which promotes inclusive access to finance for commercially oriented smallholder farmers.

In a statement ZADT indicated that the overall objective of the Causeway project was to improve access to finance for youth and women involved in viable and scalable agribusiness initiatives in peri-urban and rural areas of Zimbabwe to sustainably undertake and implement projects that improve and increase their household incomes and food security.

“This will be achieved through strategic provision of various ways of accessing finance activities inclusive of training women and youth in financial literacy and business planning, proposal writing and linking the women and youth-led agribusinesses for market led funding by financial institutions for instance banks and microfinance institutions,” said the statement.

It aims to capacitate 6 000 youth (aged 18 to 35 years); and 5 000 women (aged 36 to 65 years) agri-entrepreneurs, as well as business incubation and mentorship for 300 in-school youth from selected tertiary agricultural colleges over three years (June 2023 – May 2026).

“The project aims to attract proposals from all 10 provinces in Zimbabwe, encompassing various agricultural value chains excluding cotton and tobacco,” added the statement.

Last year ZADT conducted an access to finance training for dairy and beef farmers at Dawnview Farm in Ward 3, Marondera, under a Sida-funded Creating Adaptive Unique Systems for Access to Finance for Women and Youth (Causeway) project.

ZADT communications officer, Miss Karen Maturure said the two-day training sessions were integral in achieving the objectives of the Causeway project, which seeks to enhance access to finance for smallholder farmers as well as micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to foster improved household incomes, employment and food security.

From the 115 trained farmers, 70 percent are women. The majority of them are involved in the dairy, beef, small livestock, horticulture and grain value chain as well as feed production and had no prior training on access to finance.

At the end of the training entrepreneurial women and youths of Marondera indicated their willingness to acquire loans valued at around US$150 000.

Chief programmes coordinator with the agriculture desk in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Mr Nickros Kajengo also echoed President Mnangagwa’s sentiments saying the allocation of land to new young farmers was testament to Government’s efforts in youth empowerment through agriculture.

“The Government also created the 20 percent youth land allocation quota to enable them to break into full time farming.

The Government has deliberate initiatives to ensure that benefitting young farmers have access to capital and inputs,” said Mr Kajengo.