MSMEs Day: in The Gambia, women farmers turn post-harvest losses into value added products and increase their incomes
Farmers with small plots of land struggle to avoid post-harvest losses - the measurable reduction in the quantity and quality of their agricultural produce between the moment of harvest and consumption
BANJUL, June 30, 2026 — In rural Gambia, smallholder women farmers like Kumba Jallow face a tough reality: they work hard to grow food, yet a significant share of their harvest never reaches markets.
Farmers with small plots of land struggle to avoid post-harvest losses – the measurable reduction in the quantity and quality of their agricultural produce between the moment of harvest and consumption. A lack of access to proper storage facilities, inexperience in harvest processing and poor market access are most often to blame.
In fact, in the Gambia and across Sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest losses claim up to half of vegetable production.
For Jallow, the sun that helped her vegetable plants grow also harmed them – heat withers harvested tomatoes, peppers, and leafy greens before they can be sold — which meant months of labour, water, and investment literally shriveling before her eyes.
“Months of hard work just go wasted like this. The most painful for me was the money I hoped I could get when selling it,” Jallow said.
The African Development Bank-implemented Gambia Agriculture and Food Security Project provided Jallow and other women farmers in Jahaur village with an integrated support package. The project, with a cost of $28 million, is being funded under the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, a multilateral financing platform dedicated to improving food and nutrition security worldwide.
Jallow and other members of the Kalengi Cooperative, a farmer association she belongs to, received vegetable seeds, garden tools, and a device called a Cooltainer — a solar-powered evaporative cooling unit that extends the shelf life of fresh produce without electricity. This piece of technology has already begun to help farmers in rural Gambia cope with the extreme heat. The project also trained the women in good agricultural practices and, crucially, comprehensive post-harvest management. This included harvesting, sorting and grading techniques, as well as guidance on hygiene and packaging, and Cooltainer maintenance.
“Once we understood how to handle our vegetables after harvest – the sorting, the cooling, the packaging – we stopped losing produce. We started making real money,” Jallow said.
Turning Knowledge into Enterprise
Inspired by the program’s post-harvest training, Jallow launched a business transforming surplus tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables into tomato paste, jam, and pepper sauce — adding value to her harvest and selling product across her region. Jallow’s enterprise also created jobs for other women in the village who were not directly involved in farming.
The success of Jallow and other members of the cooperative attracted further investment. For example, they tapped a poultry production grant from the project to diversify their business into egg and meat production. As a result, these agripreneurs strengthened their financial resilience and generated organic fertilizer for their gardens from chicken waste.
“This is a simple but powerful example of integrated, circular farming,” said Philip Boahen, Lead Partnership and Coordination Manager of the Bank Group’s Agriculture and Agro-Industry Department.
“Jallow’s story shows that when we invest in women farmers not only as producers but also as entrepreneurs, they are doing more than producing food. We are providing women smallholder farmers with the skills and access to finance to see this demographic transform into drivers of economic development,” Boahen added.
The Bank’s Home-Grown School Feeding Program purchases fresh vegetables from the cooperative and other sources to provide nutritious meals for learners at local schools, many of them children of the smallholder farmers.
“Now the school buys our vegetables every week. We know we have a buyer before we even plant. That [job] security changes everything,” said Jallow.
The positive impact reaches far beyond the farm. Schoolchildren who aren’t distracted by hunger are more likely to attend classes and perform better and this is particularly the case for girls. Farming communities also benefit from local employment and increased household incomes.
Jallow’s progress — from watching harvests rot to running a processing enterprise, supplying produce to schools, and creating jobs — demonstrates how The Gambia Agriculture Food Security project’s targeted investment in rural women is delivering transformative results.
“Creating equitable market access, a catalyst for inclusive and sustainable development, has been the core principle of project implementation,” said Momodu Sow, Coordinator of the project at Gambia’s Ministry of Agriculture.
African Development Bank is a supervising entity of the programme, overseeing a substantial portion of the programme’s portfolio in Africa, such as The Gambia Agriculture and Food Security Project.
SOURCE: African Development Bank
https://thecooperator.news/aub-to-mark-20-years-with-landmark-general-assembly-in-gambia/
Buy your copy of thecooperator magazine from one of our country-wide vending points or an e-copy on emag.thecooperator.news
