Pankop Women Farmers Forum-Mpumalanga

Pilda Modjadji is a founding member of the Pankop Women Farmers Forum in Mpumalanga, South Africa.

The Pankop group, which now has 300 members, started with the humble goal of growing fruit collectively and using the proceeds to supplement family diets, raise incomes and pay school tuition fees. But the women quickly realized that the village offered few job prospects for graduates — their children were going off to the cities. Determined to create an alternative source of employment in the village, the women, with the agreement and support of traditional chiefs and municipal authorities, set up a fruit and vegetable dehydration plant.

The women’s plans were ambitious, and they felt that old-style microcredit loans — which usually range between $20 and $300 — were not enough. The Pankop group needed the equivalent of $100,000. They got the funds from local commercial banks because Thembani International Guarantee Fund, a South African organization created in 1996 by the US non-profit Shared Interest and the Swiss-based Recherches et Applications de Financements Alternatifs au Développement (RAFAD), put up $70,000 in loan guarantees. Such guarantees provide banks with an assurance that the guarantor will assume part of the losses if a default occurs.

With that first loan, the women in Mpumalanga converted an old school dormitory into a functioning plant. The project initially hired 65 young people. Then, with a second loan of $120,000, also guaranteed by Thembani, they increased the number of employees to 200, working in shifts. Their latest loan is worth about $1 mn, with $800,000 of it guaranteed by Thembani. With those funds, the women plan to meet European Union health and safety standards and start exporting their produce.