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Traditionally, agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa has centered on training farmers and providing them with inputs, such as seeds, fertilizer and pesticides. In recent years, technologies have been introduced to smallholders to improve their farming practices, ranging from solar-powered dehydrators that preserve crops, to mobile apps that track pests and diseases. Yet despite these efforts to foster a “green revolution,” many farmers across the region have yet to experience the anticipated benefits.

This leads us to an important question: What key element are social enterprise and development sector practitioners potentially neglecting in our approach to agricultural development?

The answer to that question goes beyond the usual discussion of farming technologies, inputs and practices. As most global business leaders and traditional job-holders know, a person’s mindset plays a vital role in their professional success. We’ve all seen how our individual grit, determination, resilience, persistence and creativity can make or break our ability to get a job, build a career, or launch and sustain a successful enterprise. Yet when it comes to rural farmers in frontier and emerging markets, mindset development is often overlooked.

This is not just a peripheral aspect of agricultural development, but a crucial one that demands our immediate attention. It’s time we bring this to the forefront of our discussions and strategies, because the situation is urgent and action is needed now.

TRANSITIONING AFRICA FROM SUBSISTENCE FARMING TO COMMERCIAL FARMING

Farming in sub-Saharan Africa remains subsistence-based, meaning that many farmers have no other means to earn a living. They rely on the weather to grow enough food to sustain themselves throughout the year, seeing their farms as a means of survival — not a business venture.

This deep-rooted mindset makes it difficult for small-scale farmers to view their farms as potentially profitable enterprises. Imagine if you were a rural female farmer in Zambia, a country that has faced a national food emergency since early this year due to one of the worst droughts in decades. If you look around, everybody you know is suffering similarly. You see your adult relatives working hard in the field, yet growing barely enough to get by, while younger and older family members suffer the health effects of malnutrition. You all go to bed hungry, and you begin to see friends and relatives passing away due to the physical toll of the famine. And though their severity may vary, pests, diseases, drought and other natural disasters strike season after season. If this is your reality, how could you develop the mentality to view your farm as a pathway to real prosperity — even after an individual crisis has subsided?

When seeking ways to uplift vulnerable subsistence farmers out of poverty, agricultural development practitioners often aim to increase their crop productivity through agricultural inputs, tools or training, in the hope that this will lead to increased income. Their goal is for subsistence farmers to transition into resilient farmers, and then into entrepreneurs or commercial farmers. Sometimes, these farmers may reach the point where they can launch microenterprises that sell goods, such as chickens or household products, in nearby villages. This article from ISF Advisors illustrates this pathway out of poverty for subsistence farmers.

But as much as good seeds, fertilizer, farming technologies, etc., are key to turning subsistence farmers into productive, resilient business owners, sometimes a significant shift in mindset is equally necessary — particularly for women.

WOMEN’S ROLE IN FEEDING THE CONTINENT

African women continue to play an essential role in agriculture, often taking on farm labor responsibilities out of necessity. Whether it’s due to the loss of a husband or the pressing need to feed their children, many women in the Global South farm to grow food for their families. The balancing act they perform in juggling their household and caregiver responsibilities alongside their farming tasks is a testament to their strength and determination. Studies show that women perform up to 60% of agricultural labor in parts of Africa.

However, women farmers also face unique challenges that make it significantly harder for them to transition away from vulnerable subsistence farming. With limited formal education — usually only a few years in a village school — these women often need to develop their ability to think beyond their current circumstances. The village schools they attend are typically staffed by local teachers who also have limited exposure to other ways of life, and who therefore prioritize rote memorization instead of problem-solving in their lessons. This lack of exposure to creative thinking and analytical reasoning limits the development of the type of mindset that could allow subsistence farmers to dream big and envision a better future for themselves and their families.

THE NEED FOR SKILL DEVELOPMENT TO NURTURE GROWTH MINDSETS

If we want to see more considerable progress among African smallholder farmers, this shift in mindset is crucial. Technical training, seeds and technologies alone cannot end these farmers’ poverty. I work in agricultural development across sub-Saharan Africa, and many of the farmers with whom I work barely earn $1/day. They would require a multifold increase in crop yields to take them across the World Bank threshold for extreme poverty (currently at $2.15/day). In my work across several bilateral and multilateral-funded donor projects, I’ve seen how difficult it is to ensure that smallholder farmers experience and sustain multifold increases in yields.

At The Harvest Fund, I work with rural Zambian women’s farming cooperatives, and I have observed that successful farming cooperatives have individual members who exhibit a growth mindset, a term popularized by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. In her groundbreaking book “Mindset,” Dweck contrasts two different types of mindset: a fixed mindset based on the belief that one is defined by permanent traits, vs. a growth mindset based on the belief that one’s basic qualities can be developed and expanded. She writes that “when people believe in fixed traits, they are always in danger of being measured by a failure. It can define them in a permanent way.” On the other hand, for those with a growth mindset, “failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded — if change and growth are possible — then there are still many paths to success.”

These different mindsets can be seen in the varying degrees of success among the women’s farming cooperatives I work with. For every successful cooperative or individual female farmer, there are hundreds more who are stuck. Extreme poverty, colonialism and patriarchal influences have eroded their hope and self-esteem, so these women are often unable to make agronomic decisions on their own or foresee a better farming future. Sometimes local government extension workers do not have the fuel, bandwidth or phone connectivity to reliably answer their questions. Meanwhile, tribal leaders do not have the agronomic expertise to provide accurate advice. So when donor-funded programs end or government resources are unavailable, they feel helpless, assuming they are once again at the mercy of uncontrollable factors like droughts, floods or pest infestations. They perceive that they can only afford agricultural inputs or successful harvests if an NGO assists them. These NGOs — and the broader development sector — want them to be independent and to grow their farms beyond their wildest dreams. But how can they do that if we are acting as their crutch, inadvertently convincing them that we are essential to their success?

What these farmers really need is the confidence to believe they can find solutions independently. We can and must continue to provide them with new agricultural technologies, seed varieties and modern practices for increasing crop production. But we must also support the development of the mindset shifts that can enable farmer success, particularly in the face of climate change. For a woman farmer to think big and believe she can become a resilient farmer or micro-retailer, she must strengthen her problem-solving skills and have the confidence to make decisions independently.

HOW MINDSET SHIFTS CAN UNLOCK AFRICAN WOMEN FARMERS’ POTENTIAL

We aim to cultivate these skills and mindset shifts in my work with The Harvest Fund. When we launched the enterprise in late 2019 — unknowingly a few months before the biggest pandemic in over a century — we focused on providing farmer cooperatives with good seed, fertilizer and other inputs. Then we transitioned each cooperative to agricultural technologies, such as farm irrigation systems that run on solar energy. We provided bi-weekly training, focusing on conservation agriculture. Yet we were unable to see the yields we had hoped for.

Our business model involves aggregating our farm cooperatives’ vegetables to sell to big buyers. Yet to obtain the quantities we needed to sell, we knew we needed to strengthen the cooperatives further to get them to cultivate more. To link strongly with local buyers, we had to ensure that these cooperatives could reliably grow the number of vegetables the buyers needed. Yet it was becoming clear that seed, training and technologies were not enough to generate this increase in production. We also needed to focus on the soft skills required to enable the mindset shifts that could help move the women farmers in these cooperatives to the next level. As a social enterprise, our success was tied to the success of the cooperatives — and we knew they could only succeed if they had the confidence to build their cooperatives, farms and lives.

So we began working with the women farmers in these cooperatives, aiming to encourage the critical thinking, self-esteem, problem-solving skills, reasoning and personal leadership that could unlock their full potential. We soon saw that more than a one-time workshop would be required, since we are attempting to undo generations of ingrained beliefs. So we began to focus on strengthening these soft skills through The Harvest Fund’s EmpowHER Academy, which allows for multiple formats of training — including on-site sessions at cooperatives’ farms and overnight retreats for cooperative leaders. These women’s progress in their work with The Harvest Fund gives us hope for a brighter future in agricultural development. While we still have a lot of work to do, I’ve been amazed at the signs of progress so far: We’ve seen some farmers double their incomes and others earn enough to invest in solar-powered home lighting systems.

The EmpowHER Academy’s training sessions incorporate skills that are often taught in top business schools, for instance in Professor Hitendra Wadhwa’s Personal Leadership and Success course at Columbia Business School and in INSEAD’s Embracing Complex Change. If these skills can equip future global business leaders, why not use them to empower those in the last mile? In our conversations with rural Zambian women, we find that they have dreams of starting businesses to sell secondhand clothes, livestock, fruits, vegetables and the like. We’ve realized that these microenterprises are their only route out of poverty. They often cannot access formal jobs that offer regular wages and benefits due to their lack of formal education. Moreover, rural women in Zambia and across the region must stay home daily to care for their children or dependents. Whether through profitable farms or microenterprises, entrepreneurship is often the only way for them to escape a subsistence farming lifestyle.

Working with African women farmer cooperatives has taught us that we need to move beyond providing seeds, training and technology if we hope to facilitate an agriculture transformation on the continent. It’s time to recognize the crucial role of mindset shifts in this process. By focusing on empowering women with the skills and confidence to make independent decisions, we can bring about a fundamental change in the agricultural landscape of sub-Saharan Africa.

Michelle Kurian is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of The Harvest Fund.

Photo courtesy of Adam Ojdahl / IWMI.