Building a legacy on the land

QACHA’s NEK –WHEN Relebohile Monethi dropped out of university shortly before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, she thought her world had crumbled.

Today she is a joyous advocate for “agripreneurship” as a strategy to pluck thousands of rural Basotho out of poverty – thanks to her bold decision to venture into agriculture.

Monethi is a rural farmer running multiple businesses in the agricultural industry committed to change the description of rural people from poor to rich.

She is the brains behind the Morali’a Monethi Holdings brand.

Morali’a Monethi Holdings started as an agribusiness focusing on rearing chickens and slaughtering them for retail. After dropping out of university, she decided to also venture in catering and hospitality instead of leaving her rural home of Qeme, Ha-Mpo to seek a job in town.

She has now expanded the business to selling health products and training people on nutrition and how to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Despite that Covid-19 forced her to halt the business for a year, Monethi does her utmost to ensure that her business does not go under.

“Many businesses are arising under various names that Morali’a Monethi Holdings will hold a controlling interest in,” Monethi said.

“This has been a tedious process more so with the debt incurred during Covid-19. To start again has been challenging but I believe the structure this time is solid.”

Monethi said the 2020/2021 farming year was “incredibly difficult” for her financially.

“There were debts and losses,” she said.

But she has soldiered on.

“I have lost count of the number of times I have saved my business from falling. The stories are many but I advise all entrepreneurs and business owners to study, read and listen to audios about their craft, not forgetting enrolling in online courses to better their skills-set.”

Monethi says her failure to acquire a university degree was painful but she has found joy and fulfillment in agriculture.

“The smell of the soil in the morning, watching a day-old chick grow from day one to full maturity, planting a seedling and harvesting good, fresh produce; that is my passion to date.”

Monethi says her goal is to export organically produced and processed products from her Morali’a Monethi Farms.

“We have a good product line that just needs further financial backing to solidify in terms of being export ready,” she said, adding that her dream is to leave a lasting legacy for her son.

“Being in business is about securing profits, yes, but building a legacy is about those profits as well as touching lives and making sure one’s child can point at your life and say ‘may I be like my mother’.”

“I am passionate about sharing financial literacy tips and rules with women in and out of the entrepreneurial space. Women carry so much burdens, mothers often suffer the most as the financial and emotional load lies heavily on them,” said Monethi.

In another part of the country, some 200 kilometres south of Maseru in Qacha’s Nek, a 34-year-old woman is relying on agriculture to put daily bread on her table.

Khauhelo Ranthamaha who grew up as an orphan after her mother died when she was only three-months-old, says she loathed agriculture as a child.

She hated seeing her widowed grandmother, the only guardian she knew and adored, labouring in the fields.

“I regarded her as a miserable old woman. I would see her in the fields from morning till late in the afternoon every day,” recalled Ranthamaha.

“My grandmother loved farming because that was where she got money and food. Although farming was our way of life, I did not like it because I saw my grandmother suffering because of it. I never thought that one day I would be happy to be a farmer.”

The grandmother was however a mere subsistence farmer. It is because of this that Ranthamaha saw no real value in agriculture because she never had new Christmas clothes like other children in December.

When schools opened every year she would be given second hand uniforms and shoes. Problems deepened after her grandmother died in 2011.

Nobody had registered her for social grants and she relied on her grandmother’s friend for food until a Good Samaritan found her a job at the nearby Mohale’s Hoek district’s Farmers Training Centre (FTC) where she looked after livestock.

“That is where my love for agriculture was ignited. I was hired to look after cattle and I also had to milk them,” she said.

After some years she left the job at the FTC and started her own small farm.

“I love animals and I have my own and now people are calling me Farm Lady and I am proud to be called that,” said Ranthamaha who boasts of milk cow, 15 rabbits and two pigs. Her five sheep were recently stolen.

“I have a site for a farm I am planning to own. I want to own a large flock of sheep for wool and many goats and cows for milk.”

She is also committed to crop farming for commercial purposes.

“All I need now is a greenhouse for the crops,” she said.

The two women’s forays into farming epitomise the way thousands of Basotho women are making ends meet in the rural areas of Lesotho, where males are often absent looking for scarce jobs in the mines and construction sites in and outside the country.

A 2018 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report states that rural women in several African nations, including Lesotho, engage in 60 percent of family farming operations and have the additional burden of providing nutritious meals for their families.

A study published by the National University of Lesotho (NUL) last year said “the participation of women (in Lesotho) is mainly for subsistence farming, and has been regarded as one of their poverty alleviation strategies in the rural areas”.

The World Bank classifies Lesotho as a lower-middle-income country.

The Voluntary National Review of 2022 says more than 65 percent of communities are rural and poor and derive their livelihoods from the exploitation of natural resources.

The Country Strategic Opportunities Programme 2020 – 2025 says while Lesotho has made significant progress in poverty reduction and economic growth in recent decades, pockets of deep poverty remain in rural areas along with continuing inequality.

“The contribution of agriculture to Lesotho’s GDP, which was in decline, stabilised at between five and six percent over the past decade,” it says.

In spite of this decline, agriculture remains the primary source of income for approximately 38 percent of the population and contributes to the livelihoods of 70 percent of the rural population, according to the report.

The Government’s second National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP II) 2018/19-2022/23 sets out a vision to shift from a government-led to a private sector-led growth model, which includes a focus on agriculture and tourism.

The theory of change is premised on the understanding that deep and pervasive rural poverty cannot be overcome only through a focus on increasing the poorest and most vulnerable households’ agricultural productivity.

Rather, the development and growth of a more inclusive rural economy requires a mix of interventions, which includes differentiated support to different categories of household producers, according to their resources and asset base.

“This will include support for emerging small-scale commercial farming and the development of off-farm employment opportunities for households with limited productive opportunities,” states the NSDP II.

Aligned with the NSDP II objectives, and based on extensive consultations with the government and the United Nations Country Team, the goals and strategic objectives include contributing to the transformation of rural Lesotho towards a more resilient and economically productive environment. Such an environment will allow people to sustain their livelihoods and overcome poverty and malnutrition.

The first strategic objective is inclusive commercialisation of the rural economy.

The second strategic objective is to strengthen an enabling natural and business environment for sustainable and resilient rural transformation.

In collaboration with the government and other partners, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will provide support through a mix of interventions including loan-financed rural investment projects, grant-financed analysis and capacity-building, and country-level policy engagement and formulation.

Tholoana Lesenya & Thooe Ramolibeli