Women Farmers’ Co-operative in the Koinadugu district is fast-growing and significantly improving the livelihood of women in this part of Sierra Leone.

Located at One Mile, Wara Wara Yagala Chiefdom in the Koinadugu District, North of Sierra Leone, the Kusalako Women’s group, is one of the 32 women-to-women organizations that constitute the Koinadugu Women’s Vegetables Farmers’ Co-operative. Established in 2009 shortly after the rebel insurgence in Sierra Leone, the group is made up of 25 members (24 women and 1 man). Agriculture is their main source of livelihood. They are mainly engaged in the production and marketing of assorted vegetables including Irish potatoes, onion, cabbage, cucumbers, lettuce, green beans, hot pepper, beans, carrots as well as inland valley swamp (IVS) farming.

Haja Sundu Marah, a 45-year-old woman is a long-time farmer and Chairperson of the Koinadugu Women’s Vegetable Farmers’ Co-operative and a member of the Kusalako Women’s group. Sundu and many of the women here are mostly widows, with little or no opportunity for education. Koinadugu is a predominantly male society where women are not given equal opportunity as their male counterparts, especially in the area of accessing formal education. Sundu’s dream was to be highly educated but religion and other discriminatory socio-cultural practices including early marriage limited her potential.

But today, Madam Sundu is proud of being the Head of a well-coordinated, properly managed and potentially viable Kusalako Women’s group, thanks to the support provided by IFAD through the Rehabilitation and Community Based Poverty Reduction Project (RCPRP).

The main aim of the project was to create opportunities for these women to become major producers of vegetables and rice in Sierra Leone. The IFAD-funded RCPRP developed and rehabilitated 13.10 hectares of IVS and provided the farmers with seeds and fertilizers, a generator-powered greenhouse with water tanks for drip irrigation into the greenhouse as well a piloted water harvesting facility for the group to enhance their vegetable production.

Operating under the Agricultural Business Centre (ABC) model, another IFAD-supported project, which is the Smallholder Commercialization Project – Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (SCP- GAFSP) complemented IFAD’s initial investment in the group. Under the SCP-GAFSP, IFAD supported the women with pieces of training in agronomic practices as well as providing them with tools and other processing facilities/equipment such as vehicles for the preservation and transportation of their goods to market areas in Freetown and other parts of the country.

“Agriculture has changed our lives positively as individuals and as a group”, Sundu remarked. She and many of her colleagues have gradually become influential in their community, particularly in making key decisions. She is particularly viewed as a financially independent woman who diligently supports her children’s education and other household upkeep to the greater admiration of the folks in her community. She is also motivating and engaging female youths through a weekly radio sensitization programme in her community on taking up agriculture as a business.

Other than domestic consumption, the bulk of their harvest is supplied to hotels and supermarkets in Freetown through a preservation and transportation vehicle that was provided by the SCP – GAFSP. The Irish potatoes produced by these women is particularly dubbed ‘Koina potato’ because it is planted in the Koinadugu district. Haja Sundu says the proceeds derived from vegetable farming are fairly distributed among the group members who further invest their shares in small-scale businesses as well as pay for their children’s education, medical, and other related welfare.

“But there are challenges. One of the major hindrances is the acquisition of improved modified seeds within the country”, she says. Otherwise, the leader embarks on a difficult journey of traveling to other West African countries such as Senegal and Ivory Coast to procure viable agricultural inputs that often affect the planting calendar for its late arrival.

Access to land is a major challenge in this part of Sierra Leone.  Here, land acquisition and ownership are mainly patriarchal. Nevertheless, Sundu has championed the group’s desire into acquiring more than 10 hectares of productive land on a relatively free basis for the purpose of maximizing their vegetable production and income.

Following a nationwide assessment of the IFAD legacy farmers by the Agriculture Value Chain Development Project (AVDP), which is a successor to the previous IFAD funded projects, AVDP considers the group as productive and viable. So Sundu and her group are already slated to receive further support from the AVDP through the IFAD-supported emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Sierra Leone. Already the AVDP is supporting these farmers with a solar-powered borehole at the main agricultural sites of the Kusalako Women for irrigation purposes to support vegetable cultivation during the dry season. This is expected to directly benefit more than 750 women farmers across the Koinadugu District.

The group leader recalls that their members are now actively part of an established IVS Farmer Field School (FFS) that is run, financed, and supervised by the AVDP and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. “This is an amazing opportunity for us to further develop and refresh our skills in IVS and vegetable production”, she concludes.