By Conrad Mwanawashe
SMALL scale Agroecological Entrepreneurs (AEE) are appealing to government to introduce policies that support growth and development of small businesses.
The AEEs, who went through a two-day capacity-building training session on agroecological and territorial markets, pleaded for favourable policies that will help to baby-sit small businesses.
The training, organised by Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM), in partnership with Knowledge Transfer Africa (KTA) focussed on capacitating the AEEs on human resource management and business management.
“We appeal to policymakers to consider SMES when setting policies from company registration, tax requirements, licensing requirements,” said Senzeni Chigama, an advocate for agroecology and entrepreneur.
“Please help us as we take baby steps and consider requirements specific to small scale enterprises. Currently the licensing requirements are the same for SMES and big corporates. Please do not choke us,” said Chigama.
The AEEs had an opportunity to learn about business management and how to market and represent their brands and organizations.
“The AEEs said that it was very expensive to register as an organization, as a small to medium enterprise. They got an opportunity to discuss this with government. The second thing was that they wanted markets focusing on agroecology,” said Farirai Jemwa, Programs Officer for PELUM Zimbabwe.
The second part of the session was a national dialogue between the agroecological entrepreneurs and government representatives and council officials, among other stakeholders.
The sessions were attended by government officials from the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development and Local Government and Public Works Ministry.
Gertrude Chambati is into agro-processing and value addition of small grains. Gertrude sources the small grains from small scale farmers in rural areas, specifically from those who practice agroecology.
“I’m trying to promote the adoption and cultivation of small grains and creating empowerment for the youth and young women. I’m trading is Majestic Africa,” said Gertrude.
Her product lines include finger millet, pure millet and sorghum and local teas which include baobab coffee and moringa.
“I also have brown rice, our local mupunga, unrefined brown rice. I also have baobab powder and tamarind, our indigenous fruits. As an agroecology entrepreneur, some of the challenges that I’m meeting include lack of resources.
Tracy Vongai Mapfumo, founder of Eny’s Treats, manufacturers of a range of nutritious snacks from locally sourced ingredients, mostly sesame seeds, sweetened with honey, and a variety of other unique ingredients, said getting product certification was a hustle.
Tracy, a qualified crop scientist, also said scaling up production capacity to meet demand was also challenging due to lack of capital.
“I’ve been doing this for six years, and we are not, it’s well known, we are not supplying the retail shops in Zimbabwe. We are not exporting. These are the things that we would want to achieve, but we do not have machinery.
“We’ve done our best in terms of product development, finding customers and improving our packaging, carrying out nutritional analysis for most of the products and the shelf life tests without grants or any other financial support,” she said.
Blessing Gudyanga, an officer with the Women and SMES Ministry invited the AEE to approach government for clarification and support through their registration and licensing processes.
The AEE have mooted an association of African agroecological entrepreneurs and territorial markets to lobby for their objectives.
“The way forward is that we need to strengthen the African agroecological markets. The association will award them an opportunity to have their voice heard, and also that government can consider their issues,” PELUM Zimbabwe, Programmes Officer, Jemwa said.
