Balandize Kimeze

Supporting the seed once it comes up: a group of smallholder women who have farmed together since 2014.

Women of the Balandize Kimeze group sit in front of a brick house.
Group members in front of a house

Their name means “supporting the rising seed”: while the seed rests in the soil there is little to do. Only once it comes up can its growth be supported and encouraged. The photos are from the visit in February 2024 and the meeting in April 2025.

01 — The group

Mostly women, since 2014

Balandize Kimeze is the name of a group of mostly women who want to improve the yields of their smallholder farming through cooperation and sharing knowledge. The group has worked together since 2014.

The members keep chickens and pigs and grow staple foods such as maize, beans, potatoes and cassava, mostly for their own families.

Members of Balandize Kimeze sit in a circle on blue chairs under banana plants and talk.
Group meeting in the shade, February 2024
The group sits with papers under trees, a brick wall behind them.
Notes and exchange
Participants sit on plastic chairs among banana plants.
In the circle
Women in the group read papers while sitting together outdoors.
Papers
The group sits side by side, with bricks on the ground in front of them.
Next to the building site
One participant speaks and holds papers while the others listen.
In conversation

02 — The enclosure

Chicken rearing: a setback and a fresh start

From the end of 2021 the group ran a shared chicken-rearing project. One member provided space on her land. With support from SOLI, a temporary roofed enclosure was built and stocked with 120 chicks. The idea: after 8 to 10 weeks, selling the grown chickens brings in enough for new chicks, feed, medicine and a small surplus. Any extra income is to go towards seed.

In 2022 the rearing had to stop because the income no longer covered new chicks and feed. The reasons were an unsuitable location for the enclosure, the group’s limited know-how, and a huge rise in feed prices following the war in Ukraine. In 2023 a fresh start was therefore planned: a new enclosure in a more central place and better rearing conditions.

Funding from the Hamburg family foundation Hanseperle made the fresh start in 2024 possible. Since then the group has been earning a modest income.

Two men lay bricks on a low building, a wheelbarrow of mortar in front and banana plants behind.
The new enclosure under construction, 20 February 2024
A bricklayer stands on a wooden scaffold and sets bricks on the enclosure wall.
Brick by brick
A man stands on the freshly laid brick wall, his shadow falling on the façade.
The wall is up
A hen with chicks crosses the yard between brick houses and banana plants.
The yard between the pens
Women of the group tend chicks inside a brick enclosure, with feed lines hanging from the ceiling.
Chicks in the enclosure
A colourful flock of chickens pecks feed from the ground.
Feeding
White, black and brown chickens gather around a feeding spot.
The flock
Chickens spread out across the sandy yard.
In the yard

03 — Inside

A charcoal brazier and a new room

Inside the brick building a wooden platform holds a charcoal brazier – the room the group showed during the visit.

Two women stand in an unplastered brick room beside a wooden platform.
Looking at the interior
Two women look at a charcoal brazier standing on a wooden platform covered with paper.
The charcoal brazier
A clay pot of charcoal stands on stones in the middle of a wooden platform.
Ready to light

04 — Yard and garden

What grows alongside the chickens

A permaculture workshop for the group is planned. All members are smallholders and would benefit from advice of their own. The aim is that those who complete the course pass on what they have learned. Bananas, vegetable beds, pigs and rabbits are already in the yard.

Banana plants with young shoots at their base, the ground covered in dry leaves.
A banana grove behind the house
Rows of vegetables grow between banana stems on mulched ground.
Vegetables among the bananas
Two pigs look through a mesh of reinforcing steel in their pen.
Pig rearing
White rabbits eat greens in a wooden hutch.
The rabbit hutch