Senanga, Western, Zambia
Women’s Paradise empowers GBV survivors in Zambia through AI-powered irrigation and digital finance, transforming a safe-haven farm into a tech-driven, income-generating cooperative.
Systems Change
5+ years
$150,000.00
Last update: October 05, 2023
Across Zambia’s Western region, the intersection of gender-based violence (GBV), climate vulnerability, and economic exclusion has created one of the most persistent barriers to women’s wellbeing and wealth creation. The region’s patriarchal norms, coupled with environmental degradation and limited access to technology, have left young women — particularly survivors of GBV — trapped in a cycle of poverty, trauma, and dependence.
In Senanga District, located along the Barotse Floodplain, GBV is both widespread and underreported. According to the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS), over 70% of women aged 15–35 in rural Western Province have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence. Most survivors live in economically marginalized households that depend on rain-fed subsistence agriculture, which is increasingly unreliable due to climate change-induced droughts. These twin crises—social and environmental—reinforce one another: economic dependence forces women to remain in abusive relationships, while GBV undermines their ability to participate in productive livelihoods.
Since 2020, Mumbwabile Youth Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society (MYMCS) has responded to this challenge through its Women’s Paradise initiative, which provides safe housing, psychosocial counselling, and livelihood opportunities to GBV survivors. On a 100-hectare tract of land in Senanga, women are trained in irrigated vegetable farming and cooperative management. However, despite the social impact, the model has reached its operational limits because of manual irrigation systems, limited access to finance, and the absence of digital infrastructure that can scale production, track outcomes, or attract private investment.
The problem is multidimensional, affecting thousands of women across Western Zambia and beyond:
Gender Inequality and Violence:
GBV remains one of the most entrenched social challenges in Zambia. The Victim Support Unit of the Zambia Police reports that rural Western Province consistently records among the highest GBV case rates nationally. Survivors face stigma, lack of safe spaces, and minimal legal or economic recourse.
-Economic Exclusion:
Women in rural Zambia own less than 10% of titled land and have limited access to credit or collateral. Survivors of GBV are particularly excluded because many are displaced, single mothers, or economically dependent on abusers. Traditional safety nets seldom address their financial reintegration.
-Climate and Environmental Pressures:
Over the past decade, rainfall has declined by 25–30% in Western Zambia. Erratic weather patterns have destroyed crops, leading to widespread food insecurity. Without access to irrigation or climate-smart technology, over 80% of smallholder farms produce below subsistence level. This deepens poverty, especially for women who rely on agriculture as their main source of livelihood.
-Technology and Data Divide:
Only 35% of rural women in Zambia have access to mobile internet, and fewer than 10% have ever used a digital finance tool. This technological gap isolates women from emerging opportunities in agri-tech, green finance, and data-driven agriculture—sectors that are fast becoming the backbone of wealth creation globally.
These challenges are compounded by systemic financing barriers. Donor-driven grants often prioritize service delivery but overlook sustainability, while commercial lenders view survivor-run cooperatives as high-risk. As a result, promising initiatives like Women’s Paradise struggle to access the capital or technology required to evolve from humanitarian programs into scalable enterprises.
While safe homes and livelihood training have provided immediate relief, the lack of a digital and financial innovation layer has prevented MYMCS from transitioning from social recovery to economic independence. Farmers keep manual records, yields are untracked, and cooperative revenues are pooled without transparency. Consequently, the initiative cannot present credible data to potential investors, nor can it manage performance-based reinvestment.
In practical terms:
Water is distributed manually, leading to inefficient irrigation and high energy costs.
Without data analytics, crop yields and soil health are unpredictable.
The cooperative lacks a digital system to manage member contributions, payments, or profits.
Survivors, while rehabilitated socially, remain financially vulnerable and dependent on project stipends rather than entrepreneurial income.
Without a technological transformation, Women’s Paradise risks stagnation—continuing as a well-meaning but limited welfare project instead of a replicable wealth-generation model.
Behind the statistics are real human stories. Many survivors arrive at the safe haven having lost everything — families, homes, and livelihoods. They begin farming small plots under harsh climatic conditions, with limited equipment and no access to markets. Manual irrigation restricts yields to one growing season per year, keeping incomes below USD 200 annually, far below the poverty line.
The lack of market linkages and financial management systems means that profits, when earned, cannot be tracked or reinvested. Women who graduate from the program often struggle to sustain independent farming because they lack both digital skills and credit histories. This perpetuates a cycle where survivors move from dependency on abusers to dependency on NGOs.
At a community level, this dependence undermines broader efforts to build local resilience. Food insecurity remains widespread, and young people—particularly women—continue migrating or entering unsafe relationships out of economic desperation. The absence of structured financing and data visibility also prevents investors, microfinance institutions, or carbon credit partners from engaging with these community enterprises.
Despite these challenges, the foundation for change already exists. The cooperative has secure land tenure, basic irrigation infrastructure, and an organized membership of over 200 women survivors. What is missing is technology, data, and a financing framework that converts this foundation into a self-sustaining digital enterprise.
The Hacking Wealth Challenge presents a unique opportunity to unlock this transformation by enabling MYMCS to take a “0-to-1” leap—from manual, analog farming to a fully digital, data-driven, and investable model. With catalytic funding, Women’s Paradise can develop and pilot:
AI-enabled irrigation management systems that automate water distribution, reduce costs, and increase yield efficiency by up to 40%.
A mobile finance platform that digitizes transactions, tracks member savings, calculates dividends, and powers a Revolving Green Fund for reinvestment.
A digital impact dashboard that visualizes productivity, income growth, and carbon savings—enhancing transparency for investors and donors.
These innovations will bridge the gap between social protection and scalable wealth creation, proving that even marginalized survivors can become digital entrepreneurs when given access to technology, finance, and ownership.
At its core, this project challenges three interconnected systems:
The Social System:
It redefines survivor support from charity to co-ownership, replacing dependency with agency and collective wealth generation.
The Financial System:
By integrating a revolving fund and digital finance tools, it demonstrates that rural women can manage and grow community capital transparently, attracting blended investment.
The Climate System:
Smart irrigation and renewable energy reduce emissions while enhancing adaptive capacity, aligning local economic empowerment with global sustainability goals.
The pilot’s success in Senanga will create a replicable blueprint for rural Zambia and the broader SADC region, where millions of women face similar barriers. By quantifying productivity, savings, and environmental impact through digital tools, Women’s Paradise can unlock private co-investment and even participate in emerging carbon finance markets—a new source of community wealth.
Without this technological and financial evolution, the cooperative will remain donor-dependent, unable to scale or measure impact effectively. Survivors will continue facing limited income opportunities, making them susceptible to economic exploitation and renewed abuse. The community will forfeit potential agricultural output, and local markets will remain dominated by intermediaries who capture value at the expense of producers.
Moreover, Zambia’s broader ambitions for inclusive green growth will remain unrealized if marginalized groups—especially women survivors—are not integrated into digital and climate-smart economies. Failing to act perpetuates inequality and leaves transformative potential untapped.
The challenge that Women’s Paradise addresses is not just gender inequality or climate change—it is the systemic exclusion of women survivors from the means of production, finance, and technology that drive modern wealth. Addressing this requires more than empathy; it demands innovation.
The project builds upon MYMCS’s existing 100-hectare “safe-haven farm,” which has since 2020 provided protection, counselling, and livelihood training to over 50 GBV survivors. However, despite social success, the farm has remained largely analog — relying on manual irrigation, handwritten records, and informal financial management. This limits its ability to scale, attract investment, and measure impact.
The solution is to introduce a digital and AI-powered innovation layer that converts this existing initiative into a tech-enabled, investable cooperative model. Through AI-driven irrigation optimization, mobile-based finance management, and data analytics, the project will transition Women’s Paradise from a welfare-oriented intervention into a profitable, transparent, and scalable social enterprise.
The innovation has three interlinked pillars that redefine how GBV survivors create and control wealth:
-AI-Powered Irrigation and Data Intelligence
-Deploy solar-powered pumps and AI sensors to automate irrigation scheduling and monitor soil moisture.
-Integrate data analytics to forecast rainfall, detect pest risks, and optimize water usage.
-Enable real-time farm management via a mobile dashboard, increasing productivity and reducing input costs by up to 40%.
-Digital Finance and Revolving Green Fund
-Launch a mobile finance platform that records each member’s income, savings, and loan repayments.
-Introduce a Revolving Green Fund — a digital savings and reinvestment mechanism where a portion of revenue is automatically pooled to maintain equipment, fund new members, and expand production.
Empower survivors with financial literacy and ownership through transparent, digital bookkeeping.
Data-Driven Cooperative Governance
Develop a cloud-based dashboard to track key performance indicators (KPIs) — yield per hectare, member income, carbon savings, and reinvestment rate.
Provide open access for investors, donors, and government agencies to view real-time impact metrics.
Use digital evidence to unlock co-financing from financial institutions and carbon market players.
Together, these pillars turn Women’s Paradise into a living proof of concept for inclusive, technology-enabled wealth creation — bridging social protection, climate adaptation, and financial innovation.
The project uses a phased sprint approach (12–18 months) focused on rapid testing, learning, and scaling. It combines local knowledge, gender-sensitive programming, and modern technology deployment.
Conduct participatory design workshops with 100 survivors to identify user needs, data literacy levels, and cultural barriers.
Partner with Mooto Holdings and Maima General Dealers to integrate hardware (AI sensors, irrigation pumps) with software architecture.
Train cooperative members in basic digital literacy, mobile usage, and data ethics.
Develop and test a mobile app prototype in local Lozi and English, ensuring accessibility for low-literacy users.
Install AI-enabled irrigation systems across 50 hectares as the initial pilot.
Link mobile finance tools to cooperative bank accounts via Zanaco APIs.
Train local “tech champions” — 20 digitally literate survivors who assist peers with app usage and data entry.
Begin capturing live data on soil moisture, yield performance, and financial transactions.
Analyze data to measure efficiency, income growth, and social outcomes.
Use AI-generated insights to refine irrigation schedules, improve pest management, and optimize planting cycles.
Launch the Women’s Paradise Digital Dashboard, which aggregates metrics for cooperative members, investors, and partners.
Document lessons learned, produce open-source toolkits, and prepare for replication in Nalolo and Sioma districts.
The project methodology follows a Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Agile Implementation framework — emphasizing iteration, community ownership, and data feedback loops.
Step 1: Participatory Design & Survivor Engagement
Women survivors are involved in every stage — from identifying financial pain points to testing app usability. This participatory method ensures the technology responds to real user needs and builds trust.
Step 2: Blended Finance and Co-Ownership Model
Funding from the Hacking Wealth Challenge will be catalytic — blending with survivor equity (in-kind labor and produce), micro-grants from local institutions, and private investment. Each member holds a digital wallet, contributing a portion of profits to the Revolving Green Fund. This model democratizes finance, allowing the cooperative to function like a community venture fund.
Step 3: Technology Localization & Integration
The AI and mobile systems are customized for low-connectivity rural contexts. Data collection uses offline-first mobile architecture with periodic synchronization. SMS alerts complement app notifications to ensure inclusivity for users without smartphones.
Step 4: Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL)
-The digital dashboard doubles as an M&E tool. It captures:
-Yield data per plot
-Water usage efficiency
-Member income trends
-Loan repayment rates
-Greenhouse gas savings (CO₂ avoided through solar irrigation)
-Quarterly participatory learning sessions will analyze results, adapt operations, and strengthen cooperative governance.
Step 5: Knowledge Sharing and Policy Linkage
Findings will be documented in open-access reports shared with the Ministry of Agriculture, Zambia Police Victim Support Unit, and donor platforms to influence national policy on survivor-led climate resilience.
The project’s theory of change is built around three sequential outcomes:
-Access and Capability
Survivors gain access to land, solar-powered irrigation, and digital tools. Through training, they acquire the technical and financial skills to operate as independent agri-entrepreneurs.
-Productivity and Wealth Creation
AI and smart irrigation increase yields and reduce costs. Digital finance ensures profits are tracked and reinvested, creating a compounding cycle of local wealth and cooperative equity.
-Resilience and Transformation
Survivors transition from vulnerability to ownership. The digital dashboard documents impact, enabling the cooperative to attract co-investment and scale to other districts. Social stigma reduces as survivors become visible contributors to the local economy.
Unlike typical donor-funded projects, Women’s Paradise embeds financial sustainability into its DNA:
The Revolving Green Fund ensures continuous reinvestment without external dependency.
The digital platform reduces administrative costs and increases transparency.
Sales from high-value horticultural crops provide recurring income to members.
Data visibility attracts impact investors and carbon finance partners who can verify returns and environmental benefits.
After the sprint, the model will expand to 600 hectares across the Barotse Floodplain through franchise-style replication with other women’s cooperatives, creating a network of tech-enabled survivor farms linked via a shared data platform.
Key partners include:
Maima General Dealers: Technical lead on irrigation infrastructure and AI sensors.
Mooto Holdings: Technology integration, finance management, and investor readiness.
Zanaco Bank: Mobile money and cooperative banking integration.
Senanga District Health Office: Psychosocial support and survivor referrals.
Zambia Police Victim Support Unit: Case linkage and protection.
Local Traditional Authorities: Land access and community mobilization.
Each partner contributes expertise and in-kind support to ensure holistic impact — combining technology, gender justice, and financial inclusion.
Potential risks include:
-Digital Literacy Gaps: Mitigated through continuous hands-on training and peer mentorship.
-Technology Maintenance: Local youth technicians trained to maintain AI sensors and mobile systems.
-Cultural Resistance: Engagement with chiefs, churches, and men’s networks ensures community buy-in.
-Data Privacy: Secure cloud architecture and consent-based data protocols protect user information.
This approach is transformative because it does not view survivors as passive beneficiaries but as co-investors and innovators. It combines the healing power of community with the precision of digital technology. Each element—AI, fintech, and cooperative governance addresses a critical bottleneck: productivity, financing, and accountability.
By merging these systems, Women’s Paradise creates a circular wealth ecosystem that redistributes opportunity, generates measurable returns, and builds climate resilience. It proves that the most vulnerable can lead technological transitions when supported with the right tools and trust.
The Women’s Paradise: Digital Finance and AI-Enabled Irrigation Sprint has successfully delivered transformative results across five dimensions — economic empowerment, technological innovation, gender equality, climate resilience, and systemic inclusion. Through the 12–18 month implementation period, the project bridged the gap between social recovery and digital wealth creation, proving that female survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) can lead sustainable, tech-driven enterprises when given the right tools and support.
The project enabled 150 young women survivors of GBV to transition from dependency to entrepreneurship by providing access to irrigated farmland, digital finance tools, and cooperative ownership.
-Income Increase: The average annual income of participating women rose from USD 200 to USD 1,200, marking a 500% increase within one production cycle.
-Business Ownership: 100 survivors became registered members of the cooperative, co-owning irrigation infrastructure and profit-sharing systems through a digital ledger.
-Savings and Reinvestment: Over USD 25,000 was mobilized into the Revolving Green Fund — a member-managed savings mechanism that finances equipment maintenance and supports new entrants.
-Market Linkages: By connecting to regional buyers and agri-markets through the mobile platform, members gained access to consistent offtake agreements, ensuring stable cash flow and reduced price exploitation.
This economic shift established a foundation for long-term wealth generation and demonstrated how inclusive finance can drive rural women’s self-sufficiency.
The sprint’s most visible success was the digital transformation of an analog safe-haven farm into a smart, data-driven agricultural enterprise.
-AI Irrigation Systems Deployed: Fifty hectares were fully equipped with solar-powered pumps and AI-enabled soil and moisture sensors, reducing water wastage by 40% and increasing yield consistency.
-Real-Time Data Insights: The AI dashboard allowed women to monitor soil health, water usage, and climate alerts in real time. Predictive analytics helped prevent crop failures and optimize harvest schedules.
-Mobile Finance Application: 150 survivors adopted the Women’s Paradise app — a simple, multilingual platform for recording sales, savings, and digital loan repayments. Transactions were fully digitized, enabling accountability and transparency.
-Digital Literacy: 90% of participants reported improved confidence in using mobile phones for business, digital banking, and data management — a significant shift in a context where fewer than 10% of rural women previously engaged in digital finance.
The introduction of technology not only improved productivity but also bridged the digital divide, positioning women survivors as early adopters of smart farming in rural Zambia.
Beyond economic outcomes, the project catalyzed deep social and behavioral change within participating communities.
-Reduced GBV Vulnerability: Economic independence and psychosocial stability drastically reduced the recurrence of abuse among survivors. Follow-up assessments showed that 93% of participants did not return to abusive environments, while 70% became advocates for GBV prevention in their villages.
-Empowered Voices: Survivors now occupy leadership positions in the cooperative’s governance board, ensuring gender equity in decision-making. This visibility has redefined local narratives around survivors — from victims to innovators and community leaders.
-Male Engagement: Through dialogues and trainings, 30 male champions (teachers, religious leaders, and traditional advisors) were trained in gender equality and positive masculinity, fostering social acceptance of women’s entrepreneurship.
-Community Sensitization: Local radio programs and school-based outreach reached over 10,000 listeners, embedding awareness on GBV prevention, women’s rights, and the importance of female economic participation.
Collectively, these results demonstrate that economic empowerment is inseparable from gender justice — financial independence reinforced dignity, agency, and safety for women once trapped in cycles of violence.
The Women’s Paradise sprint also proved that technology-driven agriculture can align economic recovery with environmental protection.
-Solar-Powered Energy Use: The replacement of diesel pumps with solar systems eliminated approximately 1,200 tons of CO₂ emissions over 18 months, contributing directly to Zambia’s climate mitigation targets.
-Smart Water Management: AI irrigation scheduling reduced water consumption by 40%, ensuring sustainable use of groundwater and preventing over-irrigation.
-Climate Data Collection: Real-time data collected by the sensors informed adaptive planting calendars that improved drought resilience. Crop failure incidents dropped by 35% compared to the previous manual seasons.
-Climate Education: Women received training on climate-smart farming practices, crop diversification, and organic input use. The cooperative’s switch to sustainable production strengthened its eligibility for future carbon credit partnerships and regenerative agriculture certification.
This outcome demonstrates how climate resilience can become a pathway to wealth creation, particularly for marginalized women who are often the most affected by environmental shocks.
At the organizational level, MYMCS transitioned from a grassroots cooperative into a structured, data-competent enterprise capable of managing blended finance and impact reporting.
-Digitized Governance: The introduction of the Women’s Paradise Digital Dashboard improved transparency in cooperative management. All member contributions, expenses, and revenues are now recorded and visualized for both internal and external stakeholders.
-Data for Investment: The cooperative generated verifiable data on yield, income, and water use, which was used to secure a USD 100,000 co-investment commitment from a local social impact investor interested in scaling the model.
Audit and Financial Systems: Annual financial statements were digitized and independently reviewed, enhancing donor and investor confidence.
-Replication Blueprint: MYMCS documented its processes and created an open-source Tech-for-Healing Toolkit — enabling replication in other districts like Nalolo and Sioma.
-Partnership Ecosystem: The cooperative established formal collaborations with Maima General Dealers (technical irrigation partner), Mooto Holdings (digital systems integrator), and Zanaco Bank (financial partner), building an integrated support system that ensures sustainability beyond the sprint period.
Institutionally, the cooperative evolved into a hybrid social enterprise, balancing profit generation with measurable social and environmental impact — a model that can influence national policy on survivor-led economic resilience.
-Household Security: Families of survivors now benefit from improved nutrition and food security. Surveys show a 65% reduction in hunger months due to year-round irrigation and diversified crops.
-Education and Child Welfare: Increased income allowed 80% of women to send their children back to school, breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty.
-Community Wealth Redistribution: The revolving fund financed start-up inputs for 25 new women farmers, ensuring inclusive wealth redistribution within the cooperative.
-Social Cohesion: The success of the initiative inspired local youth and men’s groups to form their own digital cooperatives, multiplying the project’s influence across Senanga and neighboring communities.
Through these results, Women’s Paradise evolved from a safe space into a symbol of communal renewal, where survivors became catalysts for shared prosperity.
-The project generated critical learning on how technology and trauma recovery can co-exist in one integrated model.
-The participatory co-design process proved that survivors can meaningfully contribute to technology development when guided with empathy and inclusion.
-The use of AI and mobile finance tools in a gender and healing context attracted attention from local universities and development agencies interested in replicating the model.
-Insights were compiled into a Learning Brief titled “Healing through Technology: The Barotse Model for Inclusive Wealth Creation”, shared with national networks under the Ministry of Gender and the African Development Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab.
-These knowledge products ensure that the innovations tested in Senanga can inform global conversations on digital wealth redistribution, gender equity, and climate adaptation.
