Sacks of onion harvested from Ruweng farms. (Courtesy).

29-year-old Mary Abiong Kuol works with a growing farming enterprise in Ruweng Administrative Area, which uses social media platforms to advertise a variety of farm products.

She is the Finance and Marketing Manager at the Young Farmers Association; an agricultural business comprising nine farms with more than 150 members in Panriang and Abiemnom, north of the country.

Abiong says she makes use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to advertise and facilitate the sale of different farm products, thus reaching a big number of customers easily.

The enterprise has a Facebook page named – Young farmers Association in Abiemhnom – RAA.

Launched in 2022, the page now has over thousand followers and advertises different produces including onions, tomatoes, okra, and sorghum.

After putting their products online, Abiong said their customers will text their order, which they deliver through motorcycles and tricycle.

Speaking to Eye Radio, the young entrepreneur said social media’s capacity to reach many people is a important in business.

“Personally, I feel social media has made life so easy for people who are coming up for business, because somebody somewhere may be scrolling looking for items they need,” she said.

“In this business I offer delivery services where onion can be requested and delivered by your door where we provide more job opportunities of Boda-boda.”

However, she says transporting the farm products remains a major problem challenges.

Abiong said they have resorted to using costly airplanes to transport their products to the market due to bad roads.

According to reports, agriculture in South Sudan largely remains at subsistence level with average field sizes of two feddans/acres per household with crop yields being very low.

Smallholder farmers in South Sudan also face competing issues including insecurity, lack of electricity, flooding, and poor infrastructure, especially a lack of passable roads, the civil war, desert locusts, the economic situation, and droughts.

Early this month South Sudan celebrated the International Women’s Day under the theme; Innovation and Technology.

In an interview with Eye Radio, Abiong further encourages women to work hard to transform their work into the biggest business through social media.

“Continue pushing in any business that you have started and work hard to turn it into the biggest level. I would like to encourage women to use social media wisely by pushing their products.”

“This helps them to gain confidence. Someone may ask how I can start and approach the client.”