Female entrepreneurs are a formidable force in Zimbabwe’s rural areas. Shiela Chikulo argues for public policies and private support. This will help them continue supporting their families, while simultaneously contributing to economic recovery and growth.
Female entrepreneurs are a formidable force in Zimbabwe’s rural areas. Although often only seen as subsistence farmers, women are the main traders of fresh fruits and vegetables. They are strategic players in the movement of food from the field to the nearby urban areas. Yet, they face challenges on a daily basis, including inhibitive market rules and regulations, and gender insensitive institutional structures.
Research in the Goromonzi District in 2012-13 has shown some of the constraints that they face – that add to the many issues that their male counterparts have to deal with when marketing their products. Female traders are required to work and often sleep in open market spaces, where there is no shelter to accommodate them, a lack of toilet facilities and the presence of bullying middlemen. The obsolete market infrastructure and general mayhem in the market spaces is particularly challenging for women.
In addition, formal finance institutions have historically entrenched stringent criteria for granting loans and credit to small enterprises which are biased against women. If the farm is not joint titled, married women are not eligible to be considered for a loan. Options for accessing credit from micro-finance institutions and lending agents are limited, as they ask for large collateral and high interest rates.
Despite these challenges, women play a very important role in all rural areas, and many venture further to access distant markets in the capital – which again poses another set of risks. In an attempt to overcome the cumbersome, frustrating and unappealing process of securing loans, women in Goromonzi, and other parts of the country, have established social finance schemes, as savings groups where members pool together their resources.
These attempts need to be accompanied by adequate public policies and private support. Zimbabwe needs by-laws that are formulated in a participatory manner, involving those who link producers and consumers. And these by-laws then need to be enforced in a manner that doesn’t disenfranchise women entrepreneurs. At the same time, finance institutions and banks need to revisit the criteria and conditions under which women can access credit facilities, particularly those aspects related to collateral and titles to assets.
Such anomalies should be addressed openly. Finance institutions should also build on the existing informal social networks for the provision of finance, working with those groups of women that have demonstrated the ability to organise themselves and be accountable for revolving funds. These changes will help women entrepreneurs continue supporting their families, while simultaneously contributing to economic recovery and growth.
Shiela Chikulo
Shiela Chikulo works as Programme Coordinator at the Ruzivo Trust; a not-for-profit organisation based in Harare, Zimbabwe.
E-mail: sheila@ruzivo.co.zw
