Moringa cultivation drives transformative rural outcomes by freeing women from food insecurity, economic dependence and back-breaking field-labour, improving their health and enabling women to drive higher-priority development agendas.

Women

As an Africa-based project where women are the primary caretakers of rural agricultural productivity, Kilifi Moringa Estates delivers transformative drivers of food, economic, health and social security to this group, notably in displacing maize cultivation from its primary role in the rural economy. In doing so, KME drives:

• Exponentially increasing land-yield value, from current maize cultivation yields of less than $40 per acre/year to over $1,000 per acre/year. This outcome alone, is transformative on rural poverty and all its associated ills.
• Exponentially decreasing husbandry labour, substituting multiple yearly planting/harvesting cycles with 2–3 easy harvests per year, in contrast to labour intensive maize processing (sorting, cleaning, grinding).
• Both food and economic security to households via Moringa’s dual use (edible leaf and oil-bearing seed), delivering high-yield availability of both essential resources in one package.
• The greater participation of other communal actors, e.g., elder and younger generations, widows and single-earner households, without the harsh labour requirements of traditional cultivation.
• Higher value economic, social and development agendas (other than just food provision) in line with the enhanced time, labour and financial resources available to them.

Moringa cultivation can thus drive transformative rural outcomes, liberating women from food insecurity, economic dependence and backbreaking field labour, thus promoting improved health and greater development participation.