Articles
Blog articles
Vouch Digital: Tracking development impacts in real time
In the face of recurring famine and drought in Karamoja, Uganda, the area is receiving enormous developmental interventions by developmental agencies, NGOs, governments, private companies. Most if not all of these initiatives share one aspect in common lack of transparency and accountability, a scenario where organisations are not sure if the interventions reach the target beneficiaries.
Read More#VALUE4HERConnect: Africa’s first digital platform for women-led agribusiness
A new digital platform has created an avenue for women agripreneurs to easily reach out to one another, access market information and training, and improve their engagement with the national, continental and global agribusiness ecosystem.
Read MoreVALUE4HER: connecting women to new markets
To enhance interaction and networking among African women in agribusiness and potential investors and trade partners, a B2B trade fair was recently held by the VALUE4HER initiative in Nairobi, Kenya. Sabdiyo Dido describes the aims and outcomes of the event.
Read MoreClosing the gender digital divide, opening opportunities for women in agriculture
by Busani Bafana and Nawsheen Hosenally
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are promoted as an equaliser of opportunities – but this is not always the case for women. Several African initiatives are demonstrating the critical contribution that information and knowledge can make to increase agricultural productivity and run a profitable agribusiness.
Read MoreWomen farmers and agripreneurs must take action to influence global development agendas
Throughout history, women have made gains in control of their selves, assets and visibility in a male dominated world, and then lost them. In those moments, like Penelope waiting for Ulysses, women unpicked and restitched the tapestry of their lives. We could be facing another of those unstitching moments right now, as women's roles and aspirations are being challenged in many arenas. It is time to recast and restitch.
Read MoreImpact Stories
Championing women and organic coffee farming in Jamaica
Vibrant reggae music, athletic prowess, flavoursome food and white sandy beaches are perhaps what Jamaica is best known for. Also coffee – but not so much the organic version. For over 20 years, Dorienne Rowan-Campbell has been working hard to change that.
Read MoreWomen-led agribusiness in Samoa reaches global markets
by Taaloga Apa , Isolina Boto , Chris Addison , Emil Jejov and Osseni Senou
Imagine a small women-led organisation in a remote Pacific island nation supplying products sold in more than 3,000 shops in 66 countries. Women in Business Development Incorporated (WIBDI), a non-profit organisation working with 1,000 farming families in Samoa is doing just that, and much more.
Read MoreLovin Kobusingye, the accidental entrepreneur
Sharing actionable knowledge helps to turn ideas into reality. The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has seen powerful returns from bringing together young entrepreneurial thinkers and doers from all over Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Read MoreMarthe Montcho: Blogging for social change
Marthe Montcho started her blog, L’Agriculture au féminin or Women in Farming, in October 2013. Despite initially knowing very little about blogging, she quickly became a success as the blog grew in popularity. Montcho’s desire to fill what she saw as an information gap and empower female farmers, particularly in her home country of Benin, led to her winning the Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloCo), organised by CTA in 2014.
Read MoreThree-dimensional knowledge sharing
Leaving an uninspiring office job, Debora Linga received support from CTA to set-up her own NGO, Tribal Peoples Development in Suriname. Thanks to her Saramaccan tribal origins, she is able to truly apply a participatory approach to development. We caught up with Debora to learn how she is generating lasting impact in her local community and how CTA is involving indigenous people in the development of solutions to the issues they face.
Read MorePress release
Africa’s first online network for women entrepreneurs in agribusiness launched in Nairobi
Nairobi, Kenya, 14 June 2019. Female agripreneurs across Africa will be able to connect, network and grow their businesses thanks to the new #VALUE4HERConnect platform. More than 400 women have signed up to Africa’s first online platform for female agripreneurs, launched today at a trade fair in Nairobi.
Read MoreProject calls for women entrepreneurs in Africa to build region’s first intelligence network
Wageningen, The Netherlands, 27 July 2018: VALUE4HER a new CTA project will empower women entrepreneurs working in the agricultural sector – agripreneurs – by giving them the skills, knowledge and access to markets, finance and services they need to build their businesses. The project is calling for women-led agribusinesses to register to become part of the first intelligence network targeting women-led agribusinesses in Africa.
Read MoreEDD 2018: Panel highlights pathways to improve women’s access to ICT in agriculture
CTA leads debate at the European Development Days in Brussels
Read MoreICT Update
Women and Digitalisation in Agriculture
Research and statistics state that women constitute around 40% of the agricultural labour force in the ACP region and while they make essential contributions to rural economies and the growing advancements in digitalisation - the gender gap in access to information communication technologies (ICTs) continue to widen. This means women farmers, particularly in rural areas, experience difficulties accessing information, financial products and services and markets. They also often do not participate in relevant policy-making.
Read MoreGender and open data: Is there an app for that?
Wouldn’t it be handy if you could just switch on that app and see the agricultural (or any other) sector through a gender lens? And what if everyone else also working in the agricultural sector just magically started to use it? Would it make us do things differently, collect different data, push for the release and visualisation of other types of datasets, or would we make sure the data were more equally accessed and used?
Read MoreSpore
Digitalising agriculture - Bridging the gender gap
Access to digital innovations – from SMS advice services to digital networks that connect women in agribusiness – is enabling women to participate in formal agricultural value chains and improve their livelihoods.
Read MoreYoung agripreneurs create markets for farmers in the Congo
To encourage value addition of cassava and provide employment opportunities for local farmers, women and youths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, young entrepreneurs have established eight processing centres across the country.
Read MoreA passion for porcine production
Accounting for 38% of worldwide meat production, pork is attracting a new generation of African entrepreneurs – bucking the continent’s traditional aversion to the meat.
Read MoreWith Sooretul local products are just a click away
An e-commerce platform in Senegal offers agribusinesses and smallholder farmers access to urban clients looking to buy quality local products.
Read MoreDon’t leave technology to the men
Dr Eleni Gabre-Madhin, CEO and Founder of blueMoon – Ethiopia’s first youth agribusiness incubator – shares her experience as a woman entrepreneur in Africa’s agricultural sector and stresses the importance that agribusinesses ‘think digital’.
Read MorePublications
Whole-family approach to agricultural market success

This brief describes how Women in Business Development Incorporated (WIBDI), a non-profit organisation in Samoa, works with farming families to produce high-value products for local and global markets. Shifting away from a women-focused approach, WIBDI now uses an approach that involves the whole family, keeping all family members on board. It has also invested in digital applications and resources to increase the efficiency of operations, profile the producers and their products, and facilitate engagement with markets and customers.
Read MoreDigitalising agriculture - Bridging the gender gap
Access to digital innovations – from SMS advice services to digital networks that connect women in agribusiness – is enabling women to participate in formal agricultural value chains and improve their livelihoods.
Read MoreWomen and Digitalisation in Agriculture
Research and statistics state that women constitute around 40% of the agricultural labour force in the ACP region and while they make essential contributions to rural economies and the growing advancements in digitalisation - the gender gap in access to information communication technologies (ICTs) continue to widen. This means women farmers, particularly in rural areas, experience difficulties accessing information, financial products and services and markets. They also often do not participate in relevant policy-making.
Read MoreWomen’s agribusiness access index
by Oluwaseun Adedeji , Aurélie Reynier , Michael Sudarkasa and Dorienne Rowan-Campbell
This brief outlines why we need an index to measure and monitor women’s access to the services, markets, policies and other aspects constraining their ability to contribute to and benefit from opportunities in agriculture and agribusiness, especially in the developing world. This would allow policy-makers, women’s development advocates and development partners to better focus their efforts so they make agriculture work for women.
Read MoreBreaking barriers of access to land for women
by Hellen Mukasa , Aurélie Reynier and Lucia Ogunsumi
This brief looks at the role formal and traditional legal systems in determining women’s access to land and other productive resources and recommends some policy reforms to strengthen the position of women in agriculture and agribusiness.
Read MoreEvents
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Oct 29
5th Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF) Conference & Exhibition
AWIEF Conference brings together on an annual basis, business leaders, public decision-makers and investors from Africa and around the world for two days of discussion on innovative and sustainable solutions to challenges in the development and growth of women-owned and women-led businesses needed to transform the African economy.
Location:Cape Town, South Africa
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Jun 12
VALUE4HER B2B Trade Fair: "Enhancing women inclusion in agribusiness"
The VALUE4HER B2B trade fair event is organised as a platform to enhance interaction and networking among African women in agribusiness and potential investors and trade partners. It is an avenue for women agripreneurs to pitch and showcase their businesses with hopes to seal some regional and global business deals.
Location:Nairobi, Kenya
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Feb 25
VALUE4HER workshop: "Financial Management: Measuring and Growing Business Performance"
Under the VALUE4HER project, AWIEF is hosting a two-day free training workshop on “Financial Management: Measuring and Growing Business Performance” for women in tech and agribusiness, in partnership with Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH).
Location:Gaborone, Botswana
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Jan 28
VALUE4HER meeting: "Network strenghtening meeting for women agripreneurs"
CTA’s VALUE4HER project has embarked on a process of developing the first agribusiness intelligence network targeting women agripreneurs in Africa. The aim is to create a network of women in agribusiness, enhance information flow within these networks and with their markets, supply chains and other servi…Location:Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Dec 4
Catalysing actionable knowledge to make next-generation ACP agriculture work for women
As a continuation of the “experience capitalisation” activity, the third series of experience capitalisation workshop focuses on how selected information and communication technologies (ICT), digital and business linkage interventions can directly benefit women in agri-food value chains, give them voice and connections, and make their activities more profitable, productive and resilient. Pa…Location:Wageningen, Netherlands