Skip to main content

Supporting Afghanistan Women in Agriculture

By Susan Mwape

AFGHANISTAN’S dry lands are slowly turning greener for many families living in conflicts zones with the introduction of kitchen gardens – a concept aimed at enhancing nutrition and small-holder farming.

The University of Maryland has over the past 5 years been engaged in a program aimed at building technical and teaching capacity to the Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock. The program dubbed “Afghanistan Agriculture Extension Project” is led by a consortium of five Universities based in the United States of America.

The project targets 27 provinces and 193 districts of Afghanistan with the aim is to delivering effective and sustainable extension services to Afghan farmers. The project seeks to improve rural household food security and enhance agriculture-based income generation, improve nutritional status of target rural households and enhance support for women in the agricultural sector.  AAEP activities are implemented in partnerships with the Ministry of Agriculture, local researchers, farmers, and suppliers among other group.
Taryn Devereux from the University of Maryland, who is the AAEP Program Coordinator, spoke at the INGENAES Global Symposium about lessons learnt on financial management and project implementation from the women’s program. She highlighted how AAEP facilitates workgroups composed of farmers and extension worked to identify farming problems and training needs.
The agriculture extension program targets women and focusses on improving household nutrition diets and livelihood opportunities by developing Kitchen gardens.
While the program has been designed in such a way that employees are women, a few men have been co-opted into the project. Efforts are made to create some ‘women only’ spaces that help to enhance the employee’s family confidence.
Adhering to the country’s cultural norms comes at a cost, for instance; women are not allowed to travel alone and there are also a number of restrictions when they move with a man that they are not married to. To address this - an additional woman is employed, she plays the role of chaperone known as Maharam. This essentially doubles the costs of transport and other logistics.
Development work in Afghanistan is a constant challenge as the safety of local and international expert is a priority at all times – as a conflict zone there is always a sense of instability. The project has over years faced some challenges with the soil quality and mostly water as most of the country is arid.

Following Devereux’s presentation, robust discussions ensued. Participants felt the project was a worthwhile project but wondered how the AAEP was able to identify farmers especially since women do not own land. There were also a lot of interest expressed in understanding the recruitment process owing to limitations in movements of women in Afghanistan. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tales from the Hood: For Better or Worse

In its normal dramatic style the hood came to life, characterized by the young ones all running towards one direction and the adults walking hurriedly towards the same directions. This meant only one thing to get up and run towards the same direction. In my hood it doesn’t matter what it is people just follow everyone without asking questions, one decides whether to stay and watch the party or retreat and head home after they have set eyes on the drama. I ran hurried along asking anyone I made eye contact with “Nichani ayi” (what is it?), the only response I got was Kaya (I don’t know). I knew for a fact that it was not a fight, it had to be jucier than that because when it’s a fight everyone is invited to come and see it by the young ones who chant “whoo won, who won”. Aunt Yvonne as she was fondly known was the life of the party, she was married to Uncle G, an accountant at one of the filling stations. Aunt Yvonne would go out all day and drink half the night, her husband l...
7 comments
Read more

Tales from the Hood: Witchcraft is Real

So today I was drawn to a memory of some of the shenanigans from the hood. It was a hot October Day in the 90s. The country was faced with a drought and there was no water in the hood we walked far to find water mostly to the industrial area, old and young we were forced to carry whatever container we could to come back home with water as anything made a difference. On that material day, there was a drizzle of water from the hood communal tap and word spread like wild fire that there was some water at the tap we all congregated at the tap and stood in line praying that the water does not run out and everyone gets a chance to draw atleast some drinking water. The hood is divided into sections and each section has about 20 households, at times when there were water blues representatives of a household represented their respective section regardless of whether they were in line or not. After weeks of not seeing water, tempers would easily flare at the tap. While we all sat an...
6 comments
Read more

Of TRADITIONS AND RITES OF PASSAGE

By Susan Mwape  So I had the opportunity of going to what we call in my part of the world a “Chezela”. This is simply a word derived from the term ku cheza which means to chat so chezela means an endless chat that occurs over night into the wee hours of the morning. In Zambia where I come from the moment you hear people saying am going to a chezela, it is synonymous with a series of events that occur overnight by and among women initiating a young lady in a rite of passage. Often this lady would be in the process of getting married and after undergoing a series of counseling sessions, ranging from wellbeing, healthcare, motherhood and home management by a team of women led by one called Bana Chimbusa. The Chezela is the epitome of all that she learns but brings in a diverse group of women of different ethnic groups who each share what they know with the bride to be. It is usually a joyful celebration that marks the end of her initiation into married life. It is cha...
4 comments
Read more