Rural Women Assembly launched

By Melody Gwenyambira

The Rural Women Assembly (RWA) has been launched.

 The Assembly is a South-South platform which seeks to promote and advocate for rural women issues, particularly small scale farmers, in all spheres of life, economically, socially, politically among others.

“I would like to congratulate the Zimbabwe Farmer’s Union for successfully launching this big event of Rural Women Assembly. This shows that women are organized and can participate at regional and international fora to fight for their cause and this is line with my Ministry’s mandate in spearheading the empowerment of women at all levels,” The Minister of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development Honorable Oppah Muchinguri said.

RWA was established in 2009 following the rural women meeting in Limpopo, South Africa in 2008 where women representatives from nine SADC countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho, Zambia, Namibia, Swaziland, Malawi and Botswana) met to deliberate whose outcomes culminated in birth of RWA.

“Women are the backbone of the African agriculture, custodian of the land, seeds and are critical in the social reproduction of their families. They produce over 80 percent of the food that is consumed by the rural population and generate significant incomes from various livelihoods activities such as selling of agricultural produce and cross border trading,” Minister Muchinguri added.

Rural women from Zimbabwe working together with the reference group members have been involved in a number of awareness campaigns and advocacy activities since RWA’s inception in 2009 .

The overall goal of the Rural Women Assembly is to influence equitable development through policy dialogues, training and information dissemination in the SADC region and Africa for the betterment of marginalized rural social groups, of which women constitute the majority.

 Specific objectives of the Rural Women Assembly include advocacy activities for inclusive gender social transformation, food security, seed sovereignty, and against extractive industries.

“The RWA objectives are in line with the Ministry’s objectives of promoting food security at household level, eradicate hunger and poverty and promote gender equality and equity in Millennium Development Goals one and three respectively.”

The RWA Zimbabwe, besides defining specific  local issues to lobby for, will continue to fight for food sovereignty, GMO free SADC, and against the extractive industries (TNCs, etc) alongside the other SADC countries’ Rural Assemblies to promote gender equity and inclusive development.

To date various rural women under the RWA banner have participated in the following platforms: CAADP processes at AU level, BRICS and other land conferences in South Africa, People’s Popular Summits alongside SADC Head of States meetings at SADC level; Rio +20 People’s Summit in Rio de Janerio, Brazil and World Social Forum, Tunisia.

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