Do land, seeds and crops have a gender? Perhaps
they do in sub-Saharan Africa, where women produce up to 80 percent 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).
For crops such as rice, wheat and maize, which
make up about 90 percent 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, “women’s contribution… is even greater”, the FAO says,
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 an appropriate and balanced diet.”
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 protein.
“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 a drought or economic crisis hits,
women feel the pinch most, as they have to find ways to provide for
their families,” Kamotho says.
Women farmers
Despite the role and impact of women in African
agriculture, there’s still an unsettling disparity in the support they
receive compared to men. A World Bank report states that in Nigeria, for
example, while women constitute about 60 percent to 80 percent of the
agricultural work force, 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
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, Sundel 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 to men’s, 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”.
Financing problems
The ICRW believes that women farmers who own
property and have access to finance will have greater bargaining
authority and control over their incomes. In addition, studies show that
women are more likely than men to spend their incomes on their
families’ food, education and health.
Laté Lawson-Lartego, the director of the
economic development unit at Care USA, a humanitarian organisation, told
the US magazine Forbes that “when it comes to finance, we need to apply
a gender lens. When you look at how people get access to financial
services, especially here in Africa, agriculture is underserved.”
The UN and other NGOs 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 (R30m) 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 percent 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 percent of people who are
living hungry.”
One reason African women are largely excluded
from decision-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 better.
In a study of western Kenya, Saini found that
female-headed households had agricultural yields that were 23 percent
lower than those of male-headed households, and attributed the
difference to less secure access to land and lower educational levels. A
male farmer from Zambia told Saini that “there were men who have died
and left their spouses and children. Their farms are still functioning
and are even better after their deaths. This is because the women were
involved in planning and decision-making.”
Bright future
Fortunately, the future is bright for women
farmers. They are benefiting from more training opportunities,
incentives and other programmes designed to equip small-scale women
farmers with information, skills and other inputs to improve crop
quality and quantity.
For example, in the Mbeya region of Tanzania,
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is providing women farmers with
agronomy training that addresses gender-related norms and attitudes that
discourage them from engaging in coffee production. These farmers learn
how to improve coffee quality and quantity, which in turn increases
their incomes.
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
(AGRA), an organisation that promotes the productivity and livelihoods
of smallholder farmers, has teamed up with Tanzania’s agriculture
ministry to launch the Integrated Soil Fertility Management programme to
promote improved soil health through intercropping cereals with
legumes. Under this programme, women receive information on soil
fertility through community radios, cellphones and agriculture extension
workers.
Any transformation in Africa’s agriculture will
depend on women’s participation. “Investing in women’s economic
empowerment is a high-yield investment, with multiplier effects on
productivity, efficiency and inclusive growth for the continent,” says
Kathleen Lay from ONE, an organisation campaigning to end global
poverty.
The International Fertilizer Development
Center, an organisation that focuses on enhancing agricultural
productivity in developing countries, puts it succinctly: “The African
farmer is primarily a woman farmer. And she is a good farmer who can
feed her family and her continent if she is given the tools and the
opportunities to do so.”
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