Source: Forbes

The African Union has declared 2014 to be the "Year of Agriculture and Food Security", bringing much needed attention to the sector's potential to transform the continent.

This year's Africa Progress Report outlines what is needed for Africa to leverage its decade of growth into a transformative development. Africa accounts for only 2 percent of the world agricultural exports — down from 8 percent some 50 years ago. African farmers could potentially capture the $35 billion market in food imports, but could also be producing to meet the needs of an increasingly hungry world. Given some of these facts, it is clear that the role of agriculture in Africa is vital to the continent's economic growth and there is a renewed focus on it. While the report highlights several important components that are necessary to drive this growth — for instance, better infrastructure, access to land, credit, technologies, agricultural inputs, it should also bring into sharper focus the role women play in driving economic development in the agriculture sector.

Women are the backbone of rural economic development in countries where agriculture occupies the largest sector of the economy. In Africa, 80% of agricultural production comes from smallholder farmers who are composed of mostly women. Despite this fact, women tend to be locked out of land ownership, access to credit and productive farm inputs like improved seeds and fertilizers, farming technologies, support from agricultural extension services, access to markets and other factors that are critical for productivity and economic gain. Yet women farmers are expected to provide food for their children and families. Given the critical role that women farmers play in Africa with respect to agricultural production and securing livelihoods for their families, further investments and better policies are needed to close the gender gap in agriculture. By doing so, this would fuel agricultural and economic growth, as well as, promote broader development efforts for Africa.

The gender gap in the agriculture sector is also deeply rooted in cultural and institutional traditions. For centuries in Africa, women have not had rights to large land ownership, despite the fact that almost half of the agricultural workers in sub-Saharan Africa are women. Because of education inequality, many rural African women suffer the highest illiteracy rates, preventing them from benefitting from agronomic education. In addition, they are often excluded from the design and planning of community-based agriculture activities that could otherwise benefit them.

Many projects in rural Africa have tried to address the gender gap through small projects aimed to protect and promote women's agribusiness activities. One example that comes to mind is a horticulture project in Mali that I have previously worked on. In Mali, men traditionally own large areas of land and women grow horticulture on small plots of land along canal banks. The women's primary crops are melons, cucumber, and okra. This project assisted women in the commercialization of these crops in five ways. Firstly, they helped the women build the right infrastructure to protect their crops. Secondly, the project gave them access to high quality seeds and fertilizers. Thirdly, they introduced better irrigation techniques. Fourthly, they delivered agronomic training and, lastly, they helped to organize the women into a small business cooperative. The ultimate goal was to help them sell their crops at a fair price while earning enough to repay loans and keep a profit. The scale of this project was small but success was demonstrated early. The majority of the women were able to repay their loans on time. With training and supervision, they were also able to maintain the infrastructure needed to continue future harvests. Their horticulture agribusiness cooperative grew steadily and the members saw steady increases in their personal incomes. While this example demonstrated great promise, unfortunately these kinds of initiatives are still too small in scale to make any real impact. If agriculture is the heart of economic growth in Africa, then inequality issues must be addressed by policies aimed to promote women agribusiness activities at a much larger scale.

Almost half of the agricultural workers in sub-Saharan Africa are women. Women farmers are the pillars of African agriculture and yet they do not control enough of their earnings. Enabling women farmers to be more productive will also benefit future generations in Africa — not only the continent's economic growth. When women earn more money, they have more control on how to spend it. Experience shows that women invest a great proportion of their income in household nutrition and their children's education. Thus, improving gender equality in agriculture could therefore translate into a generation of Africans who are better fed, better educated and better equipped to make productive contributions to their economies. As stated in the Africa Progress Report 2014, there is no doubt that one of the most effective strategies for poverty reduction in Africa is to boost its agricultural production. To this end, investments in agriculture must also support African women farmer's business activities more broadly. Africa's progress depends on its leaders and policy makers to institute policies that empower women in agriculture and by doing so, reduce hunger and improve livelihoods for Africa's growing population.