In 1993, when Bill and Melinda Gates first visited
Africa, they were on a safari to enjoy the continent’s scenery of animals and
savanna grassland – and they enjoyed it!
But what touched the couple were the people and
their way of life.
Melinda Gates recalls seeing the collapse of a once
bubbling market in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and the struggle of
the local women in the open-air market.
“As I watched women walked in the market, there were
barefoot, they often had a child on their back or one in the belly and they’ll
have these huge piles of sticks…and it just led to series of questions – what
is going on for these women? What is happening here?” she wondered.
Melinda Gates is fascinated by the ingenuity of the smallholder
woman farmer and loves to share their experiences in agricultural practices and
their determination to cater for the education, health and improved livelihood
of their households.
Gates quest for the socio-economic empowerment of
the rural woman farmer is passionately articulated whenever she talks about
agricultural transformation in Africa.
For her, putting the rural woman farmer at the
centre of an African Green Revolution remains the ultimate agenda of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We’re very well aware that she participates in the
whole ecosystem that is outside of her two hectare farm, but anything you can
do to affect her; to help her get her crops to markets, help her to feed her
family; that is ultimately what we’re trying to achieve”, she said.
As co-Chair of the Foundation, Melinda has directed her
energy towards the nonprofit world, steering the Foundation’s work which
largely focuses on health, poverty, and development in Africa to lift the
continent’s poor out of hunger and extreme poverty.
The
Foundation works to help all people to lead healthy, productive lives, guided
by the belief that every life has equal value.
Since inception, the Foundation has paid total
grants of $23.46
billion in support of development works in more than 100 countries.
One of the largest recipients is the Alliance for a
Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which has accessed $264.5 million since
2006 to improve seeds and soil for African farmers.
AGRA
works to ensure that smallholders – majority women - have what they need to
succeed, including access to markets, information, financing, storage and
transport, as well as policies that provide them with comprehensive support.
Melinda
Gates is confident Africa can share in the inspirational lessons of the Green
Revolutions in Asia and Latin America to lift many people out of poverty, but
most importantly wants the woman to participate in the process.
Believing that people face multiple, interconnected
challenges, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation offers multiple, interconnected
solutions.
Hence, Melinda Gates’ advocacy for family
planning – and recently the Foundation rallied hundreds of partners to give 120
million additional women and girls access to contraceptives by 2020.
Her care about contraceptives is directly linked
to women in agriculture.
At the recent African Green Revolution Forum in
Arusha, Melinda said that “very often, the women I talk to about contraceptives
make their living by farming. In fact, the majority of the farmers in the world
are women: they want to bring every good thing to their children, and they can use
healthier soils, better seeds, and more accessible markets to do just that”.
“The motivation is always the same: parents’ desire
to give their children power over their lives. The specific interventions—whether
they’re contraceptives or a meningitis vaccine or improved maize seeds—are a means
to that end”, she added.
The wish of Melinda Gates is that when in 2013 Africa’s
leaders mark the 50th anniversary of the Organization of African
Unity (now African Union) and the 10th anniversary of the Maputo
Declaration, they redeem their pledge to support farmers by spending 10 percent
of their budgets on agriculture and achieve 6 percent growth in their
agricultural productivity.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has made
two long-term commitments to do its work successfully – “first, as I have tried
to make clear, we are maniacal about starting with the needs of women farmers.
It’s a philosophy, a mantra, and a promise. We will never stop thinking about
how to do it better. Second, we will always seek help from partners who are
close to farmers and their farms”, noted Gates.
Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh
No comments:
Post a Comment