AWiA Chairperson Janice Scheckter Explains Why More Female Entrepreneurs Are Needed In The Agriculture Industry
AWiA Chairperson Janice Scheckter Explains Why More Female Entrepreneurs Are Needed In The Agriculture Industry. In an interview with SABC News, AWiA Chairperson Janice Scheckter explained why more female entrepreneurs are needed in the Agriculture industry.
She said, “Across Africa women certainly make up a great part of the agriculture labour force than men do but they are severely marginalised in terms of access to finance, to land, to farm inputs etc, so women’s ability to go into agribusiness and to uplift themselves is challenging. Our focus is to really capacitate women in agribusiness and in order to do that we need to ensure that they are able to access the knowledge, the funding, the land and that’s exactly what we are doing.”
Scheckter highlights how women are not getting the opportunities to create and build their own agribusinesses as they are mostly in the labour force. She believes that women need to enter the agribusiness because they have been marginalised and when they express an interest in venturing into the agricultural business, they are met with severe challenges.
Through her organisation, she seeks to assist female agripreneurs to build their own businesses and help them sustain the business so that it can create hope and give inspiration to other females in the agricultural industry and show them that they can also build their agribusiness even if they are women. AWiA’s vision is to allow women to access the agri-ecosystem by driving socio economic impact through a disruptive virtual and physical communities.
According AWiA, the percentages of women across Africa, engaged in agriculture are astounding. Despite the fact that women make up over 70% of the agricultural workforce, women own very little land. In some countries as low as 4%, in response to the current status of women in agriculture, AWiA, African Women in Agriculture was founded as an NPC in May 2018, with the purpose of promoting African women agri-preneurs.
