Ten years hauling soil by hand: Rozina turns salt land fertile — and Rome takes notice

The land at Mesalih, in Eritrea's Southern Region, was rugged, salty and written off as barren. Rozina Mebrahtom and her children spent ten years proving it wrong by hand: hauling sand, fertile soil and manure load by load until the plots held crops, vegetables and livestock together, farmed organically. Her husband had died twelve years earlier; the farm she rebuilt became the family's livelihood and, this week, an international story. In Rome, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization named her one of its 100 Women Heroes for 2026, chosen from more than 600 nominees across 131 countries. It is not her first honour — Eritrea's National Potato Conference recognised her high potato-seed yields in 2022 — but it is the widest. Ten years of carrying soil is not a headline anyone can rush; that, in the end, is the story.

SDG 2 · Zero hunger — Mechanism: individual leader