For the past 15 years, The Hunger Project has pioneered a holistic, bottom-up, gender-focused strategy — the epicenter strategy — that empowers millions of women and men in more than 1,000 African villages to meet their basic needs on a sustainable basis.

To understand why our strategy works when so many others have failed, we need to understand the basis of Africa’s rural economy.

Experts agree that agriculture is the key to economic progress in Africa. Yet most programs to revitalize African agriculture have bypassed the most important producers — the 100 million women who grow Africa’s food.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women grow 80 percent of the food. They do virtually all the work to process, transport and market the food. Yet women own only 1 percent of the land, and receive only 7 percent of farm extension services and 10 percent of small-scale agricultural credit.

To address this vital missing link, The Hunger Project created the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) in 1999 — a pioneering program of training, credit and savings designed to economically empower women food farmers.

The initial intention of AWFFI was to demonstrate that African women food farmers could manage their own microfinance program. This has been a success. Since the year 2000, women have received 73,000 loans totaling US$4.2 million.

By 2002, it was clear that AWFFI worked best when integrated into our epicenter strategy — a strategy that mobilizes clusters of villages to work together to meet their basic needs. To date, there are 77 epicenters encompassing more than 1,000 villages and three million people.

The ultimate goal at each epicenter is to establish an officially recognized, women-led rural bank. This has now been achieved at 14 epicenters.

Prior to the creation of a women-led bank, AWFFI operates as a direct credit program.

·         To receive loans, women form solidarity groups of 10–15 women. The solidarity group receives credit as a single entity, and the members are collectively responsible for repaying the entire loan. Only when the entire loan is repaid may any member qualify for a subsequent, individual loan.

·         All loans are used for income-generating activities (for example, farming, livestock, trade).

·         The local Hunger Project team determines the country-specific annual rate of interest on AWFFI loans. The annual interest rate is always well below commercial rates.

·         No one applying for AWFFI credit may have an outstanding loan with another program. All credit obligations elsewhere are repaid before applying for an AWFFI loan.

·         Each woman deposits the minimum savings required to access a loan (usually 10 percent of the loan principal). Additional voluntary savings are encouraged.

·         All AWFFI women who apply for credit attend literacy classes if they are not already literate.

·         AWFFI women agree to keep their daughters in school.

·         All AWFFI women attend required trainings before receiving credit, including basic bookkeeping, business management skills, group dynamics and leadership.

·         All solidarity groups present their loan requests to the elected AWFFI Village Loan Committee for review. Each village loan committee in an epicenter screens its requests and recommends the strongest proposals to the AWFFI Epicenter Loan Committee. The Epicenter Loan Committee, in coordination with local Hunger Project staff, determines which groups should receive a loan, coordinates loan disbursements and collects repayments.

Women Own the Bank!

The goal of the AWFFI microfinance program in each epicenter is to assist partners in forming an officially recognized, women-led rural bank. The Hunger Project is the first organization in Africa to achieve this — to empower rural women to make the journey from illiteracy to meeting the requirements for bank certification. The steps include:

·         Successful participation in the AWFFI Direct Credit Program for two to three years.

·         Demonstrated ability to mobilize significant savings.

·         Completion of training and passing exams by the women who become the trustees of the bank.

In the overall epicenter strategy, the recognition of the bank is a milestone event, and signals the transition into self-reliance. The bank does not belong to The Hunger Project; it is entirely owned by its members and managed by the AWFFI women in the epicenter.

To date, 14 AWFFI epicenters have reached this milestone.

Not only are AWFFI partners becoming stronger economic players and leaders in their households, but they are also becoming effective leaders in their communities. For example, at Kiboga epicenter in Uganda, Latifa Mutyaba, member of the Abali Awamu women’s group, the epicenter committee and the AWFFI loan committee, has recently been elected as a council member for her parish. According to the AWFFI project officer in Uganda, Mrs. Mutyaba’s exemplary leadership in the AWFFI program and her advocacy of women’s participation and empowerment in the epicenter earned her the trust and confidence of her community and enabled her to obtain this position. Mrs. Mutyaba is just one of 31 AWFFI partners who were elected as sub-county council members in Uganda’s recent country-wide elections.

Here is one of the 70,000 stories of women’s economic progress in the AWFFI program. This is from our first epicenter in Ethiopia, which was inaugurated in February.

I am Baqalu Gada from Shikute kebele. I take care of five children by myself. After the death of my husband, I was not able to cultivate our small plot of land. So, I rented the land to someone who used to give me half of the land’s grain production.

When The Hunger Project-Ethiopia came to our area, and I joined the AWFFI loan group and got Birr 300.

I returned my rented land since I got money to buy grain seeds for cultivation. So, by part of the money I bought seeds and by the rest of the money I purchased a sheep.

In the last rainy season, I cultivated six quintals of teff and wheat from the land. Now, I kept part of the product as a seed for next time cultivation, part for family consumption and part for sale.

My family’s history is now changing. I am able to cultivate and use my land. I can say that this is the product of AWFFI program. I become a real mother — a supporter of my children, owner of land, decision-maker and a leader of a family.

A Day in the Life of a Woman Farmer