Nairobi, Kenya
July 15, 2011

There is growing optimism that an African Renaissance is taking hold and there are signs that agriculture, the predominant economic activity that engages the vast majority of Africa’s smallholder farmers is also rising. This is evident in Malawi, where remarkable success has been achieved by feeding her people and the her neighbors over the last several years. Ghana is well on its way to reducing poverty in half by 2015 through sustained agricultural growth.

Success however, is lopsided. Female smallholders, the other half of Africa’s farmers who grow much of the continent’s food are not fully on board. Africa may well be rising, and on her way towards an agricultural revolution. But a lopsided agriculture will not spawn a sustainable African agricultural revolution. Women smallholders and rural entrepreneurs on the continent are neither participating fully nor deriving benefits in equal measure in the agri-economy owing to gender obstacles driven by cultural and societal norms. This must change if Africa is to transform the capacity to feed itself and realize the quality of life envisioned for rural households and communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Learning from experience

Africa and her development partners have learned from the rich body of accumulated work and experiences over the past twenty years that spotlight women as legitimate smallholders. Yet they have remained in a productive space constricted by obstacles –on the farm, across value chains and in the distribution of benefits within the rural household.

These obstacles have made gender inequality visible and real in its consequences –from disparities in land rights, insecure tenure, limited access to agricultural inputs, lower technical skills, and poorer access to knowledge and credit, to a relatively weaker bargaining power within the household and across markets.

There is now wider awareness, following a decade of interventions that gender obstacles have a significant influence on the outcomes of agricultural interventions. We know from recent estimates that African women own only one per cent of the agricultural land in Africa. Where they do, they are more likely to have smaller and less fertile land holdings than men, whereas men’s landholdings average three times those of women.

Change is possible however. Recent FAO assessments have shown us that just giving women the same access as men to agricultural technologies could increase production on women's farms in developing countries by 20 to 30 percent. Improving women smallholders’ access to scientific technologies clearly works to improve productivity. We must also look beyond technology obstacles to focus on gender relations and the contexts in which decisions on technology play out.

Beyond the obstacles: The missing ingredient

• We need to develop a better understanding of the complexity and dynamism in African farming situations. Rural women are not uniformly resource poor and vulnerable, just as men are not uniformly resource rich and dominant. Other social identities, including age and must be considered too. To target our interventions more effectively, we must deepen our understanding of complex gender and social relations in rural households and communities.
• We need a better appreciation of the differentiated priorities in agricultural production within farming households and along the value chain. Baselines must go beyond conventional indicators. Thoughtful gender and social analyses can move project design and implementation beyond the narrow focus on women and obstacles to identify structures that either enable or constrain access of particular actors (who are often, but not always women) to opportunities.
• We need to focus on people and the contexts in which they are embedded (social, cultural, institutional) as complementary entry points. High yielding improved varieties are critical to bring about a much needed agricultural revolution. But food made from improved varieties and high yielding crops must meet people’s taste and preference as well. In Sierra Leone for example, leftover rice for breakfast is as important a determinant of adoption as yield potential in many poor rural households. Paying attention to the wider contexts of technology can lead to higher pay-offs.
• We also need to focus on the broader processes of change so that we are able to identify the kinds of support rural actors –male and female –need in order to benefit from, or adapt to agricultural change and opportunities. Traditionally successful financing models for example, may need innovative re-design to effectively respond to growing calls for agricultural lending that is also gender sensitive.

Seizing the moment

The tide is turning for Africa’s smallholder livelihoods with impressive records of success in various spots on the continent. We must now seize the opportunity to ensure the flight toward our agricultural transformation is balanced, not lop-sided harnessing the full range of human resources in the practice of farming. In working to accomplish its goal of catalyzing an agricultural revolution, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is placing these complex gender relations between men and women in households at the heart of its integrated seeds, soil health, markets, innovative finance and policy advocacy support programs –dedicating itself in deeds, not just in words –to a truly gender responsive agricultural revolution in Africa.

Website: http://www.agra-alliance.org

Published: July 21, 2011