1. What is innovative about this project?

The Woza Nami project is innovative because it redefines smallholder farming as a pathway to dignity, health, economic empowerment, and ecological resilience. Its key innovations include:

• Agroecological Hubs as community incubators for sustainable farming, which combine knowledge sharing, production, and policy engagement.
• Integration of agriculture and health, where farming is positioned as a first line of defence against malnutrition and non-communicable diseases.
• Tailormade, inclusive training supported by international partners like Nuffic, ensuring that capacity building is both localised and transformative.
• Social employment and community empowerment through partnerships like those with the Seriti Institute, ensuring inclusive job creation and skills development.
• Narrative change: Through platforms like the Stories of Change event, the project actively works to dismantle the stigma associated with agriculture and elevate the stories of farmers as agents of change.

2. What is the problem you are trying to solve or address?

Locally, the project tackles:

• Unemployment, especially among youth and women.
• Chronic poverty and hunger.
• Health challenges linked to poor diets and malnutrition.

Negative social perceptions around agriculture.

Nationally, it addresses:

• The undervaluation of smallholder farming in food system transformation.
• Inadequate localised responses to climate change and food insecurity.
• Structural barriers that prevent small-scale farmers from accessing training, funding, and markets.

By addressing these challenges in an integrated and people-led manner, Woza Nami offers a replicable model for inclusive and climate-resilient food systems across South Africa.

3. What is this project hoping to catalyse/what is your catalytic vision?

Woza Nami seeks to catalyse a radical shift in how smallholder agriculture is perceived, supported, and practiced. Its catalytic vision includes:

• Mainstreaming agroecology as a viable and preferred method of food production.
• Changing the narrative: From farming as punishment or poverty to farming as empowerment and innovation.
• Influencing local policy: Through co-created food policy recommendations that reflect community realities.
• Building a national movement of confident, trained smallholders as leaders in health, climate resilience, and food security.

The project aims to achieve this through:

• Participatory design: Involving farmers in the planning process to ensure a gender-sensitive approach that respects local knowledge systems, language nuances, community structures, and networks.
• Focused nutrition support: Shifting the focus from broader community nutrition to fostering direct relationships with extended farmer households and early childhood development services (ECDs).
• Agroecological farming support: Advancing farming skills and scaling production by providing indigenous tree seedlings, fodder, animal husbandry resources, and non-timber forest products like fibre, fruit and medicine.
• Circular economy emphasis: Promoting a circular economy through strategic input supply and market development, supported by selected enterprising farmers.

Ultimately, the project aims to position smallholder farmers at the heart of resilient, local food systems that nourish people and restore ecosystems.

4. What has the project achieved to date?

• Established six agroecological hubs in eThekwini under the municipality’s resilience strategy.
• Supported thousands of smallholders, many of whom are women, with training and inputs.
• Developed an organic seedling and sapling nursery to support agroforestry and regenerative practices.
• Partnered with the Seriti Institute and Social Employment Fund to create jobs and provide skills development.
• Ran a Nuffic-funded training programme for community leaders, government officials, and farmers.
• Hosted the Stories of Change participatory process and event, culminating in a community-informed food policy recommendation.
• Reached early childhood centres with healthy food education and outreach.
• Won the eThekwini Service Excellence Award for Best Community Facility (Inchanga Agroecology Hub).

5. What are some of the biggest lessons you have learnt?

• Narratives matter: Empowering farmers to tell their own stories is a powerful tool for policy influence and cultural change.
• Exposure is transformative: A single visit to an agroecology hub can shift mindsets—especially among youth and sceptical community members.
• Health and agriculture are inseparable: Nutrient-dense, locally grown food is essential in combating both malnutrition and disease.
• Partnerships are catalytic: Collaboration across sectors (municipality, NGOs, funders, international partners) amplifies impact and resilience.
• Inclusivity must be intentional: Access to resources and recognition must actively include women, youth, and people with disabilities.

6. How could the Green Trust Network of Executants help this idea to scale?

• Replication of the hub model: Support the establishment of agroecological hubs in other regions using the Woza Nami blueprint.
• Knowledge exchange: Facilitate cross-learning visits and peer mentoring between project sites.
• Policy influence: Coordinate efforts to develop local food policies based on participatory models.
• Shared communications platforms: Use the network to amplify farmer stories and shift public narratives at scale.
• Pooling resources: Leverage the network’s collective influence to unlock new funding and training opportunities.

7. Are there any tools, guidelines, content that you would like the GT network to be aware of that they could apply to their work?

Yes, the following tools and approaches could benefit the broader network:

• Agroecology Training Curriculum used in Woza Nami’s Nuffic programme.
• Stories of Change toolkit for participatory narrative collection and storytelling.
• Community Food Policy development framework co-created through the project.
• Agroforestry planting and nursery management guidelines developed at the Inchanga Hub.
• Social Employment Fund integration model, as implemented with Seriti Institute, for job creation linked to climate and food system resilience.

For further information visit https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/our-work/woza-nami/