Women spearhead efforts to feed people of Africa
Do land, seeds and crops have a gender? Perhaps they do in sub-Saharan Africa, where women produce up to 80 per cent of foodstuffs for household consumption and sale in local markets, according to a report by the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Advertisement
For crops such as rice, wheat and maize, which make up about 90 per cent of food consumed by rural dwellers, it is women who mostly sow the seeds, do the weeding, cultivate and harvest the crops and sell surpluses.
And for secondary crops such as legumes and vegetables, says the FAO, “Women’s contribution…is even greater,” adding that “it is as if only women are involved in producing these crops. What’s more, they make and tend the gardens that provide much-needed nutritional and economic well-being.”
Feeding the continent
While women farmers are essentially feeding the continent, they have remained largely in the background, calling little attention to themselves and receiving little help. But this situation is changing as they spearhead efforts to transform Africa’s agricultural landscape. Take for example Grace Kamotho, a lecturer at Karatina University in Nairobi, Kenya, where she also trains farmers in new farming technologies and practices that lead to higher productivity.
“Being an African woman,” she told Africa Renewal, “I recognise the fact that women are more associated with food preparation and care of the family than men, and I understand the importance of feeding families with appropriate and balanced diet.”
Ms Kamotho recently participated in a training workshop on vegetable production in greenhouses at Volcanic Institute’s Centre for Agricultural Development and Co-operation in Israel. Here, she gained knowledge about seed and vegetable seedling cultivation, among other subjects.
She said the training’s focus on vegetables was necessary because in rural Africa, vegetables supplement meals of maize, rice, potato, cassava or yam, and are a good source of proteins.
“Women tend to shop or procure food for their families, which in some cases means growing it in kitchen gardens,” she says. But women farmers go beyond tilling the soil; they also ensure prudent food management - deciding what to keep for the household and what to sell.
“When drought or economic crisis hits, women feel the pinch most, as they have to find ways to provide for their families,” says Ms Kamotho.
Comparing men and women farmers
Despite the role and impact of women in African agriculture, there’s still an unsettling disparity in the support they receive as compared with men. A World Bank report states that in Nigeria, for example, while women constitute about 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the agricultural workforce, men generally make key farm management decisions. “As a result, agricultural extension services throughout the country have traditionally focused on men and their production needs.”
In their book, Transforming Gender Relations in Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa: Promising Approaches, authors Marion S. Davis, Cathy Farworth and Melinda Sundell, argue that women’s productivity is lower than that of men because they have limited access to resources such as land, credit and other production inputs. In an interview with IRIN, a UN humanitarian news service, Ms Sundell said in Kenya, the value of female farmers’ tools was about one fifth that of their male counterparts.
Credit is undoubtedly necessary to acquire land, machinery, fertilisers, irrigation and high-quality seeds, and to hire labour. Moreover, when women’s access to finance is restricted in comparison with that of men, it creates a power imbalance that affects women’s ability to negotiate their role within households, according to the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW).
Some banks set up roadblocks to getting the necessary capital such as the need for a male guarantor or the requirement that a beneficiary must be literate, notes the World Bank in its 2009 Gender in Agriculture Resource Book. Makhtar Diop, the World Bank Vice-President for Africa, warns that “the status quo is unacceptable and must change so that all Africans can benefit from their land.”
Finance problems
The UN and other non-governmental organisations are investigating and implementing projects that provide greater access to micro-credit for women farmers.
The Hunger Project (THP), a US-based international NGO with offices across the world, has created a micro-finance programme that involves giving training, financial advice and credit to African female farmers. THP has to date loaned about $2.9 million to women farmers in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda. As a result, beneficiaries raised their production levels.
Soro Yiriwaso, another micro-finance institution based in Mali, supports women in the southern part of the country in boosting food security. Women represent 93.5 per cent of Soro Yiriwaso’s borrowers, while two-thirds of its loan portfolio goes to agriculture.
Between 2010 and 2012, under its Prêt de campagne scheme, the institution gave agricultural loans to women members of recognised co-operatives in 90 villages at the start of the planting season. These loans are repaid with interest after harvest.
African leaders’ lifeline
African leaders have also pledged to help women farmers under the 2003 Maputo Declaration (the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme), which is intended to increase support for smallholder farmers.
ActionAid, an international aid agency, has urged these leaders to fulfil that pledge, lest farmers be unable to maintain the fight against hunger. “If women are given equal access to land, seeds, as their male counterparts, we can reduce hunger in the world by 140 million people, which is about 17 per cent of people who are living hungry.”
One reason African women are largely excluded from decision space making in their homes and communities, and underrepresented in leadership roles, is their high rate of illiteracy. But according to the Swedish Agricultural International Network Initiative (SAINI), when women are given the chance, the farms they run perform just as well as those headed by men—or even better.
Credit: Africa Renewal