AKTC's Women Modular Training

Thursday, June 30, 2022

From time immemorial, women have always played a significant role in supporting farming activities. There is no doubt that women still hold a significant percentage of the agriculture work force in most African countries including Zambia. The World Bank Group estimates that women farmers make up 60-80% of the agricultural labor force in Africa. However, despite their longstanding efforts in contributing to the betterment of agriculture, the evolution of the sector has not done much to reward their attempts as several female farmers still face challenges, hence inhibiting their full potentials. Women in Africa are often facing challenges that include access to land, finance, agricultural information and extension services, education as well as in gender division of labor and lack of participation in farm management among others. 

The Zambian-German Agricultural Knowledge and Training Centre (AKTC) has initiated a deliberate goal to have a women inclusion policy for all of its planned training activities. To achieve this, AKTC developed a new modular training program specifically designed for women farmers. The programme is tailor made to attend to some of the highlighted challenges and further revive the women potential needed for the thriving of the agricultural sector in Zambia and Africa at large. 

The developed women modular training programme comprises of a series of trainings that are conducted over a period of five days, with training topics that complement each other. The objective of these modular trainings is to offer to the farmers a comprehensive training package with different relevant topics that are vital for the preselected group of trainees. 

This year, two women modular training programmes have been planned and conducted. Embedded in these programmes are two major training topics of Farm Business Simulation (FBS) Game and Vegetable Production. The Farm Business Simulation is a board-based business simulation training developed by the German Savings Bank Foundation for International Cooperation, one of AKTC’s local partners. The aim of the Farm Business Simulation training is to empower emerging agricultural entrepreneurs with good financial and business literacy skills, thus increasing their bankability, access to finance and quality of life. On the other hand, the Vegetable Production training gives a highly practical, hands-on training on crop growing and management from land preparations to harvesting and storage. Both trainings were highly practical  as the women could relate and actively participate in the learning process. 

During the training evaluation, the trainees attested to the fact that the trainings were greatly beneficial as they acquired insights that would immensely improve farming practices and business models. Notable among the many mentioned was tomato growing, record keeping and farm investments. At the end of the training the trainees were awarded with certificates of attendance. 

The AKTC continues to empower women with skills to better their farming and adopt new and improved farming technologies. 

If you want to learn more about the AKTC’s activities please contact our project manager Nora Reichmann (nora.reichmann [at] afci.de

) or our team leader on site Helmut Anschütz (helmut.anschuetz [at] afci.de

).