Repositioning women as leaders in Africa’s agriculture

Africa stands at a crossroads. After more than a decade of impressive economic growth, the benefits are yet to trickle down. The growth has failed to lift millions of people out of poverty and inequality is widening. Too many people are going hungry. Now the policy concern is how Africa makes its growth more inclusive and poverty reducing.

It comes to agriculture. With about two-thirds of Africans involved with farming, agriculture has immense potential to drive down poverty and inequality. The region has about 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land. If this potential is harnessed, Africa could feed not just itself but other regions too.

Women play a significant role in Africa’s agriculture. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) indicates that women comprise nearly half of Africa’s smallholder farmers, who contribute more than half of local food production. But they are marginalized and locked out from productive opportunities in terms of land ownership and access to finance, credit and inputs, and markets. These disadvantages undermine their capabilities to produce more. It is thus not surprising that women on the whole produce less per hectare than men.

Africa has failed to harness the full potentials of women. This has come with greater costs. Africa today imports more food than it produces to feed itself. The region now accounts for just 2 percent of world agricultural exports. This is instructive. With over 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s poor engaged in agriculture, the absence of flourishing agriculture will only restrict majority of people from the rising tide of prosperity.

The policy priority is to bridge gender inequality and ensure high productivity. In bridging this inequality, land and finance stand out as critical. Rural women are less likely to control land than rural men. Where they control and own land, there is high insecurity of tenure. This limits their investments in their land leading to reduced productivity.

Women are as well the worse hit when it comes to financial exclusion. But without the finance and credit, women cannot buy the inputs that are needed to achieve a breakthrough in expanding agricultural productivity. How do we unlock access to adequate finance? And how can finance ‘reposition’ women to lead Africa’s agriculture?

The focus must get down to the rural areas. An innovative and inclusive finance that reaches rural smallholder farmers must occupy our priority. But formal banking has not done much. The meteoric rise of micro-finance institutions is a response to fill this gap. We need to expand and make efficient the operations of these institutions. This alongside with the growing mobile technology penetration offers very powerful incentive for transforming agriculture in Africa.

The success of M-PESA in Kenya towards enabling mobile-based micro-finance has demonstrated that Africa could achieve more with mobile technology. Even without formal bank accounts, we must ensure women have access to adequate finance.

Africa has the land, water and labour needed to be an efficient food producer. A policy focus on women, land and finance could offer sustained solution to its inequality and poverty problems. 2014 as Africa Union Year of Agriculture and Food Security offers historic opportunity to reinvigorate agriculture by expanding women access to finance and making available productive inputs like land. It should begin with governments committing to spend at least 10 percent of their national budgets on agriculture as they promised in 2003.

Unless this is done, women cannot maximize the potential they have to increase agricultural productivity that could spur inclusive growth and lift millions of Africans out of extreme poverty. One thing is clear. The economic transformation Africa is looking for would be impossible without adequate attention to women’s role in agriculture. Besides, agriculture forms a greater part of economic activities of Africa’s population. Improving agricultural productivity is obviously central to addressing poverty and driving social and economic development in Africa.

Article first published on: www.developmentmail.org. Photo credit: Africa Progress Panel