Some women in Limpopo believe agriculture offers the best solution to tackle unemployment and poverty in the province.

With South Africa’s unemployment rate at 32.9% in the first quarter of 2025, women and young people in rural areas are turning to entrepreneurship as a recourse.

Basani Rivisi has decided to farm on a small portion of land she obtained from her mother-in-law.

“What led me to do farming here was the lack of employment. I was looking for a job with no luck. I studied business management. I then asked my mother-in-law to give me her land, which she was not using. I started working on it alone. I grow cabbages, green peppers, and carrots and I sell them to community members,” says Rivisi.

Meanwhile, a female commercial tomato farmer, Alicia Mamuliki, from Maangani, near Louis Trichardt, says she encountered several challenges in her journey to becoming a farmer.

“Farming is expensive, and it was difficult for me because I had no funding. The land here is also rocky. It was difficult to de-bush it. I had to hire a TLB, and it was not cheap,” says Mamuliki.

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