Matagelema, Sierra Leone (Commonwealth Union)_It is women who drive the backbreaking agriculture industry in Sierra Leone, which accounts for almost half of the country’s GDP. With subsistence farming being a key industry, a group of women are now driving their rice farming skills into a highly profitable business. With sixty percent of Sierra Leone’s population working in agriculture and over seventy percent of this being being women, rice farming for this group of women led by Mamie Achion is now becoming an unprecedented cash cow.
As dawn breaks in the village of Matagelema in the south of Sierra Leone’s Moyamba district, a collective of women seen from afar in their vibrant garb, step into stretch of land, which was once a swamp surrounded by tropical forest. Ankle deep in mud, they plough and plant their rice paddy, singing gleefully as they work until the sun makes it too hot for them to continue working.
It’s backbreaking work but in this conflict-ridden part of West Africa, the women have formed bunds and canals to shape a new irrigation system, felled trees by hand and created a space for themselves to better their lives. However, it has not been an easy journey – the women have had to battle big mining companies who would strip the land of rich deposits and relieve the farmers of their rightfully owned land.
But the adversity only strengthened the women, many of them widows or having lost fathers, brothers and children due to Ebola or the war. 150 women in Matagelema formed a women’s association and decided to march into inland valley swamps, which due to an abundantly fertile eco-system had potential to give high yields.
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Sierra Leone is naturally gifted with about 260,000 hectares of inland valley swamps which can be harvested thrice a year as they are endowed with a year round water supply. The yield in Matagelema therefore is now two metric tonnes of rice per hectare, which is thrice the average rice yields in the uplands.
The collective of women invested 5,000 Leones each to register with the National Farmers Federation and invested a further 10,000 Leones each to purchase seed and fertilizer for ten hectares of land. The income is divided equally and with the proceeds, the women have constructed a community storage warehouse.
It is hard work but the women can see productive results. They are now able to put food on the table, purchase books and uniforms for their children, uplift their standard of living and most of all, enjoy camaraderie and support from each other, they found hard to enjoy before.
The success of the project has now prompted the World Food Programme to expand it to nearly seventy communities across sixty districts in Sierra Leone, with more than four thousand farmers cultivating 890 hectares in inland valley swamps.
