Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM)

The WARM project seeks to leverage FANRPAN's experience as a regional multi-stakeholder policy research network to bridge the divide between women farmers, researchers, and agricultural policy processes, with the goal of increasing women farmers' access to markets. FANRPAN is partnering with other stakeholders, including regional and national farmers' organisations, national research institutions, universities, community-based groups, and national and regional policymakers to ensure farmers have access to markets, extension services, better seeds, adequate fertilizer, and other important resources.

The WARM project uses "theatre for policy advocacy" to: engage leaders, service providers, and policymakers; encourage community participation; and research the needs of women farmers. Essentially, theatre is being used to explain agricultural policy to people in rural areas, and to carry voices from the countryside back to government. A play, written and directed by Zimbabwean playwright Cont Mhlanga and featuring actors from Bulawayo's Amakhosi Theatre, explores the challenges rural women face in accessing farming inputs, particularly government subsidies.

One of the characters in the play is Nkolomi, a nepotistic village headman who dominates access to farming inputs. His long-standing practice is to distribute seeds and fertiliser to his cronies, depriving women - among them widows struggling to support their families alone - to the extent that some of the women have not farmed in three years. But Nkolomi is opposed by one desperate widow, by the area's newly-elected member of parliament, and by his own wife. According to FANRPAN, the story highlights how local authorities sometimes undermine stated government policy and efforts by civil society to empower women.

Agriculture, Women

According to FANRPAN, in Africa, the majority of rural farmers are women. At the same time, research demonstrates that women are often excluded from the decision-making process and local governance. As a result, the needs of women farmers are often neglected in local and national agricultural policy. Women are often marginalised in business relations and have minimal control over access to factors of production like land ownership and access, inputs such as seed and fertilizer, credit, and technology. Due to a combination of logistical, cultural, and economic factors, women farmers are often not able to benefit fully from development programmes and services. By empowering women farmers to advocate for their concerns, the WARM project hopes to ensure that women farmers have what they need to increase their income and provide for their families.

FANRPAN is currently piloting the project in two countries, Mozambique and Malawi. Results and findings from these two countries will be extended to other Southern and East African countries with a combined total population of 400 million.