Women fight hunger with agriculture in Congo

Some 70% of Africans work in agriculture but nearly one-fourth of the continent’s population is undernourished.

That reality is something United Methodist women in local churches in Eastern Congo are working to change, and in a hands-on way.

Recently, women of the denomination from Bukavu cultivated a big part of a United Methodist Church-owned tract in Katana, in the Kabare Territory of South Kivu.

“As a mother, I must take every precaution to block the road to famine,” said Mbilizi Bonane, president of United Methodist Women in Bukavu.

In February 2018, the women harvested bags of maize and peanuts from a field they had cultivated. That was a great benefit to the women and their families.

Beatrice Anunga, coordinator of United Methodist Women in the Kivu Conference, agreed that women need to be leaders in using church land to fight hunger.

Self-sufficiency is a theme among United Methodists in Eastern Congo these days.

“In each local church we encourage these projects, and this will have a positive impact,” Anunga said.

Bonane noted that there are three United Methodist sites of agriculture tended by women of the area, in Katana, Bunyakiri and Mwenga.

On Oct. 8, the president of Congo, Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, dedicated an agricultural laboratory at the International Institute of Agricultural Technology. It’s in Kalambo, in the same general area where women of the denomination have been farming on church land.

The laboratory will provide digital mapping of the soil as well as projects to improve cultivation of certain crops, such as beans, bananas and cassava. That has the potential to be a big help to all who are farming in the area, including the United Methodist women.

Lending support to the women in his own way has been Bishop Gabriel Unda Yemba. He said he is ready to champion any local congregation willing to take up agriculture to fight hunger and malnutrition.

Dr. Marie Claire Unda, wife of Bishop Unda, is encouraging women to till the soil or in some other way support agriculture projects by local churches.

“If we are poor or if we have malnourished children … it is because we neglect agriculture,” she said.

Kituka Lolonga is a communicator in the Kivu Conference.

News media contact: Vicki Brown, news editor, newsdesk@umcom.org or 615-742-5469. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free Daily or Weekly Digests.


Like what you're reading? Support the ministry of UM News! Your support ensures the latest denominational news, dynamic stories and informative articles will continue to connect our global community. Make a tax-deductible donation at ResourceUMC.org/GiveUMCom.

Sign up for our newsletter!

Subscribe Now
Mission and Ministry
The Rev. Birgitte French (second from right) of the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference addresses a class at the Mama Lynn Center in Kindu, Congo. The center provides training to vulnerable women and girls. During a visit with other members of a United Methodist delegation from the U.S. in September, French expressed her joy at strengthening the conference’s partnership with eastern Congo. Photo by Chadrack Tambwe Londe, UM News.

Center provides hope for women in Congo

The Mama Lynn Center, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, provides training and spiritual support to women who have suffered sexual violence, helping them regain their dignity and become economically independent.
Church Leadership
Mary McLeod Bethune with some of her pupils in 1905. Bethune, the daughter of former slaves, was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader. She founded what became the historically Black United Methodist college named in her honor, Bethune-Cookman College (now Bethune-Cookman University). Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress World Digital Library Collection.

9 women to know

“Southern Methodist Women and Social Justice: Interracial Activism in the Long Twentieth Century” features the stories of nine important Methodist women.
Church Leadership
Holding hands during a service of appreciation for African Americans who stayed in the church despite institutional racism at The United Methodist Church's 2004 General Conference in Pittsburgh are, from left: Anne Marshall of the church's Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns; Juanita Bryant of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; Jerry Ruth Williams; the Rev. Larry Pickens; and Bishops Violet L. Fisher and Charlene P. Kammerer. File photo by Mike DuBose.

Giving Methodist women their due

A new book brings Southern Methodist women and their social justice work to the forefront.

United Methodist Communications is an agency of The United Methodist Church

©2025 United Methodist Communications. All Rights Reserved