In Mbire, young people are at the forefront of changing policy — and young women are leading a feminist just transition from the soil up.
Recently 188 youth and smallholder farmers from Wards 2, 5, 6, 8 and 9 gathered for a youth-focused Community Sensitisation on Agroecology Strategy Enactment.
The aim was clear: to ensure Zimbabwe’s Agroecology Strategy is shaped by those most affected by climate and structural injustice, especially young women who farm with the least land, the fewest resources, and the most unpaid care responsibilities.
Facilitated by Fambidzanai Permaculture Centre ZWE, an ActionAid Zimbabwe implementing partner, with support from Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke through the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) II Project, the space used participatory, youth-friendly methods to turn lived experience into policy demands.
Through dialogue, role play and collective reflection, youth named how insecurity, exclusion and unequal resource control block a just shift to agroecology.
They spoke to the rise in livestock theft and weak enforcement, the lack of fair local markets that keep women trapped in low-value sales, and the unequal access to productive land that silences young women’s leadership in farming.
From these conversations emerged a unified district position rooted in a feminist just transition: one that protects livelihoods and ecosystems, while deliberately shifting power to young women.
The call is for the Mbire Rural District Council and Zimbabwe Republic Police to strengthen livestock protection, for market systems to be redesigned to be fair and inclusive, and for land access to be secured equitably so young women can farm, decide, and benefit equally.
These recommendations will now drive district-level advocacy, multi-stakeholder dialogues and ongoing agroecology programming.
By centering youth and putting young women’s leadership, safety and economic autonomy at the heart of policy, we are advancing climate justice through community-led solutions that build resilient livelihoods, protect biodiversity, and secure food sovereignty.
Action Aid Zimbabwe