But with the help of the GIZ team, this has now all changed. ‘The training courses made me realise how vital agriculture is to our survival,’ says smallholder Shukri Yusuf Ali. And more than that, since she now has a source of income, she no longer has to worry about how to find the money to send her children to school. She regularly had to ask for help from relatives before. If she could not get the money together – as often happened – one or more children were unable to attend until the fee had been paid.
Now, there is so much to do on the farm that Yusuf Ali’s husband helps out, too. ‘I am the farmer, he works for me,’ she says, confidently. In the traditionally patriarchal Somaliland society, this too is a sign of change.
‘In the past it was very unusual for a woman to grow crops,’ says Yurub Saleban Ali, another successful female farmer from Derimara. ‘But it’s not an issue anymore.’ There are now some 90 small farms in the area, 30 of which are run by women. For comparison: just three years ago there were 40 male farmers and only a single woman. However, no one fully relies on arable farming. They all continue to keep animals, with the women mainly opting for goats.
Mohamoud Awale is one of the region’s male smallholders. He owns a 10-hectare farm, handed down to him by his father. To start with, the fertile land lay uncultivated. ‘I didn’t use it,’ says the 28-year-old. That all changed after he attended a training course offered by GIZ in 2020. Since then, he has been growing cereals and vegetables.