Empowering rural women
Rural women all around Africa are faced with the triple burden as a result of the roles they have in their society as well as in their households. In many instances, women find themselves with no formal employment or opportunities to get an income than can enable them to provide for their families. This is because the triple burden means that women, especially rural women primarily perform reproductive work, hence they spend most of their time doing work within their households.
AfricaSMAT, therefore seeks to empower these rural African women through a number of agricultural activities that can enhance income generation in households. These include farming, poultry keeping, livestock keeping and bee keeping. These activities mean that the women are not only restricted to reproductive work but can use their time to generate income within their homes
...and Youth in agriculture
The unemployment rate in many African countries requires youth to redirect and refocus their thinking so they can move from expecting unemployment to creating their own employment. Over the years, the agriculture sector has been open to such transformations though its provision of opportunities and its openness to transformation.
At AfricaSMAT, we seek to reintroduce agriculture to the youth, so that they do not only perceive it as a retirement job. We aim to do this by transforming agriculture in a smart way in order to make it more friendly and acceptable to the youth. This transformation is through the use of technology such as smart phone applications that provide farming solutions and guidelines, the sharing of lessons learnt and success stories by other youth who are earning a living through agriculture, so that other youth will be motivated to join the agriculture sector.
