Senior Administrative Officer (Sent to The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Sub-regional Office for Eastern Africa and Representation to the African Union and UNECA
Women farmers are the backbone of agriculture in Africa. They make up almost 50 percent of the agricultural labour force in sub-Saharan Africa and have a direct contribution to 80 percent of the continent’s food. From sowing to harvesting of crops, they are also at the forefront in livestock keeping and dairy management.
Additionally, they play an important role in agri-food value chains, as workers, traders, entrepreneurs and as owners of a substantial share of small and medium enterprises. Despite this contribution, women’s role in the agriculture sector has been underrated. This, in turn, has curtailed African women to reach their full potential in agri-food value chains and pull themselves out of poverty and provide their families with a better life.
Although some progress in the agriculture sector was achieved, Africa is still unable to generate enough food for its growing population. The recent report (2019) on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World states that world hunger in recent years is also rising after a prolonged decline. According to this report, more than 820 million people in the world were still hungry in 2018. The situation is more pressing in Africa, where over 20 percent (about 256 million) of its population – or one out of five people – may have suffered from chronic food deprivation.
The pace of progress in halving the number of children who are stunted and in reducing the number of babies born with low birth weight is too slow. An average estimate of 20 percent of the population is affected by stunting, almost twice the global average.
These statistics underscore the immense challenge we have in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030 and meeting the Malabo commitments on food security and nutrition.
African nations can hardly achieve a significant turnaround and feed their citizens, unless the role of women in agriculture is considerably recognised and enhanced. One major aspect of this notion is that women do not have equal access to the resources and opportunities they need, to be more productive for attaining food security and nutrition.
In Africa, women are at a disadvantage with regard to access to, control over and utilisation of productive resources due to gender inequalities. Land, livestock, labour, education, extension and financial services, and technology are some of these resources. Landholding especially is a critical issue in Africa, where women hardly acquire quality and sizable farmlands. Labour and agricultural markets are less accessible to women farmers than their male counterparts.
Furthermore, productive resources such as extension services and income-generating activities are often not close to women farmers, who spend considerable time in domestic work. In cases where they have some access to the resources, they have less control over the revenue they fetch from agricultural produce. Generally, the limited access to the productive resources hinders women farmers from growing in the sector.
Since women tend to invest their earnings in their families, and are often responsible for the health, education and well-being of their children, there is no doubt that gender equality helps to reduce poverty and has a significant positive impact on the larger community. Next year, it will be 25 years since the first Women’s Conference was held in Beijing and the whole world will be assessing the progress made towards gender equality.
However, it is clear that there is still a lot more work to be done in this area. Local cultural barriers, climate change, illiteracy, low income levels, lack of finance for farming activities, low level skills and knowledge, conflicts and gender-based violence are still challenges that are prevalent .
If we are to end hunger by 2030 in Africa, a different approach is required as there are several interconnected issues that need to be taken into consideration to achieve this laudable objective.
We must empower women farmers primarily by understanding their plight and adopting a more holistic approach to meet their needs. Women’s voices need to be heard and, accordingly, governments and partners should identify the prevalent policy barriers and devise pragmatic strategies to ensure that women have adequate access and control over productive resources.
Governments are also obliged to increase women’s representation in local institutions in order to raise their decision-making power.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in partnership with governments and partners, works towards empowering women farmers in Africa. FAO is taking action to increase women’s access to land and financial services, extension services, skills development, markets information and income-earning opportunities through enabling policies, programmes and investments.
We, at FAO, perceive that women farmers’ empowerment is a key factor in improving the living conditions of the family and the community at large. Hence, promoting women’s access to productive resources is a major policy and programme intervention. If women have adequate access to resources, they could increase yields on the farms significantly – the result of which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in Africa.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 17 Novebmer 2019
BY ABISOLA ALAKA
