Source: Ghana Business News

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched a new report, “Economic Empowerment of African Women through Equitable Participation in Agricultural Value Chains” to economically empower women in agriculture.

The report was launched Thursday, August 27 at the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) headquarters in Abidjan by the office of the Special Envoy on Gender (SEOG) and the Department for Agriculture and Agro-industry (OSAN)

The event is said to have gathered high-level participants, including stakeholders from both the private and public sectors from the countries and sectors examined by the report – cocoa, coffee, cotton and cassava sectors in Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Nigeria, respectively.

According to the AfDB, women make up almost 50 per cent of the agricultural labour force in Sub-Saharan Africa and a total of 62 per cent of economically active women in Africa work in agriculture, making it the largest employer of women.

Furthermore over 90 per cent of economically active women are involved in agriculture in some countries, such as Rwanda, Malawi and Burkina Faso,

However the AfDB says the role of women is largely limited to the unskilled parts of production: women are rarely remunerated for their labour and do not control the income generated from the sale of agricultural produce and few own the land on which they work.

For example, the report estimates that women in Côte d’Ivoire account for 68 per cent of the labour in cocoa production, but receive only 21 per cent of the income whilst in Ethiopia, women account for 75 per cent of the labour in coffee production and receive only 34 per cent of the income.

“This report prepares the ground to empower women, to take a leading role in the business of farming and agricultural value chains, regionally and globally”, Donald Kaberuka, President of the AfDB said.

The bank believes that though agriculture accounts for around 25 per cent of the continent’s GDP, and is poised to remain one of the most important economic sectors, economic empowerment of women through boosting their productivity and raising their participation in commercial and higher value-add agricultural activities is central to the sector’s transformation.

“African women feed the continent and they can feed the world, too. But we must close the wide gap in wages and agricultural yields between men and women if Africa is to achieve full economic transformation,” said Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the AfDB’s Special Envoy on Gender.

The report highlights five major constraints that can limit women’s productivity and full inclusion into agriculture: lack of access to assets, financing and training, gender-neutral government policies, and time constraints due to heavy domestic responsibilities.