Africa Economic Development Strategies (AEDS), working with the Centre for African Governance and Development (CAGD) at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) and the Office of the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, piloted the Poverty Alleviation and Livelihoods Programme (PALP) in Umkhanyakude District in February 2023 and has since designed an expanded agribusiness project to scale its results. The district is one of the most deprived in South Africa, with high unemployment, limited access to piped water and electricity, low levels of education and many female-headed households with large numbers of children.
Umkhanyakude covers 12,848 square kilometres and is home to 625,846 people in 151,245 households, with much of the land held under communal tenure within the Ingonyama Trust and the district currently experiencing serious drought. A scoping exercise found that women grow vegetables such as cabbage, green peppers and beetroot, both for their own consumption and for sale within their villages. Stakeholders in Egujini reported that they once supplied retail groups such as Spar during the rainy season, but could not sustain supply in the dry months because there is no alternative water source. In Jozini Municipality, where water is scarce, farmers rear goats throughout the year, yet they face high kid mortality in winter from diseases such as heartwater, diarrhoea and other tick-borne illnesses, limited knowledge of husbandry and supplementary feeding, and a shortage of quality breeding stock that leads to in-breeding and uncompetitive prices.
The pilot supported 20 women goat farmers through five interventions: training, a scheduled vaccination programme, supplementary feeds, the provision of rams and goats for women who had none, and support to secure competitive markets. Rams were distributed at a ratio of one for every 25 she-goats, and 20 high-quality rams were secured and shared among the women. AEDS, CAGD, the Office of the Premier and the Department of Agriculture also helped the women develop a constitution to govern the management of the rams and to establish the Nyusokuhle Goat Farming Cooperative. The results were significant. The goat population grew by 102.2 percent, from 229 to 463, and the number of kids born in the first nine months rose from 85 in 2022 to 161 in 2023. Twenty-five goats were sold at an average price of R1,800, generating R45,000 in revenue.
Building on these results, the consortium designed a multi-million rand agribusiness project estimated at R68.5 million, to be established on 10.6 hectares of land secured from the local community. The project places emphasis on poultry farming (50,000 birds), goat farming, beef processing, stock feed and drug manufacturing, and horticultural production. At full scale, it is expected to recruit more than 3,500 smallholder farmers and create over 1,000 direct jobs, 60 percent of them for women. The underlying logic is that, once trained, organised into production groups and supported with facilities to aggregate, add value to and store their produce, subsistence-oriented farmers can become commercial producers whose livelihoods are resilient to climatic and economic shocks.
The programme aligns with South Africa’s National Development Plan and supports Sustainable Development Goals 2 (zero hunger), 3 (good health and well-being), 5 (gender equality) and 8 (decent work and inclusive economic growth) at district level. It is expected to restore and improve household incomes, diversify income sources, strengthen food security and dietary diversity, reduce the number of households living below the poverty line and improve basic community healthcare.
