The 39-year-old mother of four grew food crops to feed her family, but earned little income from her tomato crop because of poor quality and limited access to markets. Martha, like many farmers in her community, had no choice but to accept the low prices offered by…
Pascasie Mukagasana has known great hardship. She was separated from her children and her husband, Athanase Nzigiyimana, for a year following the 1994 Rwanda genocide. They reunited, only to lose a son to illness. In 1998, Athanase was wrongfully imprisoned for 10 years. Alone with her children, Pascasie struggled…
Margaret Wambui Ngure used to consider dairy farming an inadequate way to earn a living. No matter how hard they tried, Margaret and her husband couldn’t turn a sustainable profit with their herd of indigenous cattle. Traditional breeds often produce as little as one gallon per cow per day,…
“The year 2002 was the hardest of our lives,” Cecilia Kapinga recalls. Her oldest daughter was sick and needed an operation that cost the family their entire annual income. To allow their daughter to finish high school, Cecilia and her husband Filoteus were forced to sell off all their livestock,…
For more than 30 years, Specioza Kakweezi has grown the plantain-like banana known as matooke on her one-acre farm in the hills of southwestern Uganda. Specioza, a widow, once grew matooke simply to feed her family. Today, she has turned her farm into a profitable business – and a…
