news

As International Women’s Day is marked across the globe this weekend,  we invite you to join us in celebrating women across Africa.

These include the hard-working farmers who are increasing their income on small farms, the entrepreneurial small-scale business women creating their own on and off-farm enterprises, and the dynamic women’s groups who are working together to improve their lives and those of their families.

 80 of the world’s toughest endurance athletes will gather in Ireland this weekend for ‘The Race’, the inaugural 24-hour sports challenge taking place in Donegal as a benefit for Self Help Africa.

Competitors from across mainland Europe, the UK, United States, Canada and Australia are amongst the challengers who will gather in Donegal this Saturday, for a 260km run, kayak and cycle challenge along a specially designed route through the picturesque North-West.

After receiving a small loan of just 360birr (€14) from a local savings and credit cooperative, Meskerem Niname, resident of Buie in Ethiopia, has turned her fortunes around by plying her trade and becoming a successful entrepreneur. The loan allowed her to establish a textile shop from which she produces and sells garments for men and women as well as various other household items including bed sheets and pillow cases.

Shortage of improved seed is a major bottleneck for agriculture in Ethiopia. We have been working on improved seed production in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region. Better known as SNNPR, it is a huge region with an estimated 14 million people, the vast majority of whom are smallholder farmers.

On March 3rd Broadway for Self Help Africa will bring together some of Broadway’s biggest stars for a night of song and celebration benefiting Self Help Africa Inc. at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City.

Christine Mwale predicts that the income of women in her village can double when they become full-time suppliers to the new Banana Enterprise Project being supported by Self Help Africa in Nyimba, Zambia.

Established by Self Help Africa in collaboration with Nyimba District Farmers Association, the project will buy banana from 600 women farmers with small plantations in the area.

‘When I wake up I go to my fields,” says Barbara Chintino. “I have always been a farmer, and I always will’, says the 47 year old farm householder from Balaka district in southern Malawi.

Barbara and her husband Patrick are farmers with a difference.  Alongside growing cassava and maize on their small farm  at Chindikiti village, they produce pigeon pea seed, which they recently harvested and sold, earning 69,000 Malawi Kwacha (€120).

Alida and Lofta Zulu have been farming together since they were young women.

30 years on from the death of their father and the two sisters are still using the one-acre plot they inherited on the death of their father to earn a living for their families and themselves.

An enterprising peanut project is transforming the lives of close to 800 Ethiopian farm families, with producers earning a premium by trading not just their raw nut crop, but also processing and selling peanut butter to supermarkets in the region.

Just eighteen months after 770 farmers in districts of the East Haraghe region of Oromia province were enrolled and trained by Self Help Africa to participate in the pilot groundnut (peanut) project, they are seeing three and four-fold increases in their harvests of improved nut varieties.