Achieving digital dividends for women requires that they have affordable access to ICT tools and services
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Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be powerful tools to overcome limited access to information, boosting productivity and facilitating outsourcing, resource sharing and networking. But gender disparities in the use of ICTs across value chain prevent many women from achieving their full potential in the agriculture sector.
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Despite women’s role as key players in agriculture and the rural economy of developing countries, a great many barriers prevent them from making a more substantial contribution. Compared with men, women have less access to productive resources, such as affordable finance. In Uganda, an alternative financial service is helping women to save, borrow, increase productivity and strengthen their roles across the agricultural value chain.
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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.
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Gender balance, gender mainstreaming, gender bias – the issue of women is increasingly talked about in agricultural development circles, but what does it really mean – and more importantly, what is the impact? A workshop organised by CTA this week seeks to cut through the jargon, to reveal successful models for making next generation ACP agriculture work for women.
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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.
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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.
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CTA leads debate at the European Development Days in Brussels
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Digitalisation innovations have potential to transform the agricultural sector. Technology is already being harnessed to improve efficiency across the value chain – from the farm to the consumer.
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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.
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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.
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An e-commerce platform in Senegal offers agribusinesses and smallholder farmers access to urban clients looking to buy quality local products.
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Women are key actors in agricultural activities, but hardly benefit from high value businesses in agriculture. Supporting women to get into agribusinesses and to derive more incomes from agri-food markets is a sure way of increasing prosperity for Rural communities.
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Women are key to ensuring food and nutrition security. They mainly manage the households – and have the power of deciding on food. By empowering them we can ensure that entire families and communities get a nutritious diet.
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Climate-smart agriculture practices are helping to counter the devastating conditions faced by farmers in Africa in recent years. Sithembile Ndema Mwamakamba is Programme Manager for the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), a longstanding CTA partner. She explains how women are at the forefront of farmers’ efforts to build resilience to climate change.
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Convinced of the need for her native Trinidad to diversify its economy, Laura Superville was keen to set up a business based on local produce. The result is a range of wines based on the aroma and taste of tropical fruits, which has opened up a new career path for this young agripreneur, as well as job opportunities for other members of the community.
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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’.
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Women represent a large percentage of the world’s agricultural workforce and as such, it is critical that they participate more in the digital and open data revolution. Often they lack the skills necessary to access, use and share data to address food security and nutrition challenges.
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Rural households in Samoa are being connected to income streams by adding value to local products and marketing via the Internet. Adimaimalaga Tafunai, Executive Director of Women in Business Development Inc (WIBDI), explains how linking indigenous traditions to ICT tools is helping to improve smallholder livelihoods and stem the rural exodus.
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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.
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Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, with support from CTA, facilitates participatory three-dimensional modelling (P3DM) events to help settle disputes over land and resource ownership between the local and indigenous communities in the district of Baïbokoum, Chad.
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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.
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Women around the world are overcoming barriers to establish profitable businesses in the agricultural sector. However, strong links to high-value markets, access to necessary finance and resources, and sufficient business training are essential requirements for women business leaders to break through the ‘glass ceiling’ and expand their agribusinesses to compete on an international scale.
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Thirty-two-year-old Halatou Dem has been managing the Bamako-based cereal processing company Danaya Céréales for 7 years. The Malian company – with a staff of 33 – exports its processed products to Europe, the US and throughout West Africa.
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Yemisi Iranloye, managing director and CEO of Psaltry International Limited, a large cassava processor based in south-west Nigeria, has built her success on an inclusive business model that places smallholder farmers at the centre of operations.
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Secretary general for the Inter-African Coffee Organization (IACO) for 13 years, Josefa Sacko was elected as the African Union (AU) Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture in January 2017.
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CTA and the Pacific Islands Private Sector Organization (PIPSO), in collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) held a national workshop in Suva Fiji on 28-29 June on 'Promoting Nutritious Food Systems in the Pacific Islands' within the framework of the ongoing CTA/IFAD/PIPSO project .
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CTA will bring successful cases of women entering lucrative markets and expanding businesses to this year’s European Development Days in Brussels. Investing in women entrepreneurs: Enabling women’s economic participation for sustainable growth and rural development is one of four events that CTA is co-organising. It will take place on 8 June as part of the theme on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment.
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Research has shown the value of women’s economic empowerment in development programs
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The principle upon which the New Vision for Development by the World Economic Forum (WEF) was developed is based on the agreement that economies and businesses will need to be transformed if they are to ensure sustained improvements in living standards for all the world’s citizens.
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Less than a year after launching her own small chocolate making business, St. Lucian entrepreneur Maria Jackson is already thinking of expanding her production base – and moving into agritourism.
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When 29-year-old livestock farmer Noi Paulina Selepe launched her agribusiness, she realised it was too small to supply her country’s fast-growing market for chicken meat. Nothing daunted, this enterprising young woman, decided to call on other poultry farmers to join her – increasing overall output and helping her fellow producers to earn extra income in the process.
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The 2nd Pacific Agribusiness Forum not only identified pressing challenges but also opportunities and creative solutions focused on the development and strengthening of partnerships and linkages among the agriculture, agritourism, health, education and finance sectors.
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Rural women in Ampefy and Analavory are emerging from years of years of subordination and passivity, taking charge of their own development and overcoming numerous obstacles to their emancipation. Their key role in regional development is increasingly recognised by the administrative and traditional authorities, development partners and the local community. This article shows how participatory 3-D modelling helps women fulfil their potential.
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As International Women’s Day (IWD) 2017 is marked today under the theme Be Bold for Change, the EU issued a joint statement where it notes that “women are often among the most vulnerable, in conflicts, in situations of migration and displacement, and where poverty and climate change hit the hardest.”
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On the occasion of International Women’s Day, CTA is pleased to showcase the work of young women involved in agribusiness. The stories narrated in these videos have been identified and elaborated by our partner Agribusiness TV. Happy International Women Day to all women involved in agriculture in ACP countries!
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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?
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The Tadu Dairy Cooperative business model supports traditional women dairy farmers in Cameroon, and provides not only milk but processed dairy products. Increased milk production has not only helped to reduce imports of dairy products but has led to the establishment of many new shops selling feed for cattle.
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Eating and drinking well has become of more value and importance to many people today, with a lot of research showing us which foods put us most at risk and which ones may lower our risk of disease. Researchers are looking to better understand how nutrition in agriculture is of importance in a changing climate.
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Upscaling climate smart agriculture among female farmers can play a critical role in empowering women. This is the general consensus during a Workshop on Gender sensitive Climate Smart Agriculture in Eastern and Southern Africa that is taking place at Fairview Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya from 2-4 November 2016.
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Confident about what she was about to share with the participants, Mrs. Peris W. Njenga walked to the front of the room and greeted the team with an infectious smile. She had come to share on how climate change had affected farmers and particularly female dairy farmers. This was at a Programme design workshop on gender sensitive climate smart agriculture in Eastern Africa, organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) in Nairobi, Kenya.
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The 2nd Pacific Agribusiness Forum on Linking the agrifood sector to the local markets for economic growth and improved food and nutrition security, held in Samoa was organized also as part of the strategic partnership between IFAD, CTA and PIPSO and financed by CTA and IFAD with a number of strategic partners such as the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO). Other organisations provided support (SPC/PAPP, APP Caribbean, Pacific Cooperation Foundation, Samoa Tourism Authority and Samoa Chamber of Commerce & Industry, COLEACP, and IICA).
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The 2nd Pacific Agribusiness Forum begins with a focus on women as active agents and key implementers in all stages of the agri-chain. It was a full Samoan day well spent at the 2nd Pacific Agribusiness Forum. The Forum opened this morning with the launch of the Pacific Women in Agribusiness project, followed by sessions focusing on key areas of importance, challenges and opportunities for women in agribusiness across the Pacific.
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Open data is changing the way we live our lives and interact with each other. From transporting information, to improving education, government accountability, and access to healthcare, open data affects our everyday lives. Through a new project – GODAN Action – CTA and partners will build the capacity and diversity of open data users to tackle food security and nutrition challenges.
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Tanzanian entrepreneur Rose Funja believes that information and communication technologies (ICTs) hold the key to a better future for young women, especially in the agriculture sector. Setting an example for them all, she has launched a start-up that links small-scale farmers to financial institutions – and is now turning her thoughts to drones.
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The importance of women in CTA’s work cannot be over-emphasised. Almost half of economically active women worldwide depend on agriculture for their livelihood, a figure that rises to almost 80% in least developed countries. And yet women earn less than men for the same tasks, have fewer rights to land and property, and where they do hold land, it is generally poorer than land held by men.
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A farmer herself, Elisabeth Atangana is passionate about the need for effective associations to give a voice to producers and the importance of acknowledging women’s contribution to agriculture. She has been instrumental in shaping the farmers’ movement in her native Cameroon, as well as at regional and continental levels.
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Launched to add value to local fruit and generate income for women, Guyana’s Pomeroon Women’s Agro-Processors Association is going from strength to strength. Its President, Rosamund Benn is just one of a number of women whose life has changed beyond recognition since the agro-processing enterprise was first set up in one of the members’ homes 15 years ago.
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With a rapidly growing population, the Pacific nation of Kiribati will need to forge stronger links between agriculture and nutrition if it is to feed its people in the face of devastating impacts from climate change. Nutritionist and public health manager Eretii Timeon is in the frontline of efforts to assure better diets for a population that is currently suffering a dangerous mix of child malnutrition and adult obesity.
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Rose Kamanga grew up on a farm with her parents, and she now farms a 10-hectare plot in Dika Mhlanga village, northern Malawi. In response to difficulties caused by drought, erratic rainfall and warmer temperatures, she has embarked on a programme to introduce climate-smart practices to her farm, acting on advice from a government agricultural extension worker. In an interview, this mother of two children explains that the results have been well worth the extra effort to her family.
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An encounter with an innovative technique known as participatory three-dimensional modelling was to prove a turning point in the life of a young tribeswoman from rural Chad. She now travels the globe to advocate for the rights of her own and other indigenous communities and to press for their voice to be heard in negotiations about climate change, on which their futures depend.
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A Brussels Briefing on ‘Women entrepreneurs – key players in ACP agribusiness development’ took place on Thursday 17 September 2015 at the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) Secretariat. Five women: three from sub-Saharan Africa, one from the Caribbean and one from the Pacific region, gave fascinating accounts of starting and managing agribusinesses. They talked about the factors that had driven their success and the challenges they face..
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