Sunday, 06 October 2024

for Business Owners

Funding Farmer Stella: The Complexity of Agri-Financing in Zimbabwe

(Zimbabwe) - Meet Stella Masukume, in the middle of her field of cabbages almost ready for the market. She is a farmer in Nyabira, a farming community just outside Harare on your way to Chinhoyi. She grows vegetables, maize, beans, tobacco and chickens, with ability to do even more.

Farmer Stella has a fertile piece of land, 50 hectares, that has boreholes, a small dam, and store houses; land ready to be profitably manipulated for all manner of crop and livestock, within the vicinity of a ready market. 

She participates in Command Programmes, yet still operates within 20% of the capacity of the land and her vast expertise of farming.

Her challenge, as many other farmers in Zimbabwe, is access to capital or contract farming deals, and the local commercial bank has a part to play in this, just by mere unavailability of relevant information for farmers to access such funds. Read full article on Kufunga Magazine.