Equal opportunities key to agricultural transformation with CAADP

The commitment of African leaders on Agriculture for Women Empowerment and Development is the focus of the 11^th Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development (CAADP) Partnership Platform (PP) Meeting holding in South Africa.

CAADP is an African-wide agenda designed to support the transformation of the continent’s agriculture for sustained food security and socio-economic growth.

The annual continental forum brings together more than 500 stakeholders in African agriculture – ranging from government, the private sector, international development agencies, the African Union, civil society and Regional Economic Communities.

“Our top challenge remains that of changing the lives of our farmers that will benefit all our fellow citizens by improving our collective food and nutrition security. And of course this can only happen by tapping into the potential of those who can most contribute to it. Our women have to be at the forefront,” says Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, Chief Executive Officer for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency.

The 11^th CAADP Partnership Platform is being held in the context of the celebration of the year of women empowerment and after a landmark summit for African agriculture last year in Malabo.

The NEPAD Agency, as development agency of the African Union, is considered critical for addressing challenges of achieving the Malabo goals with particular attention for women.

Through the Malabo Declaration, a recommitment to CAADP made by Heads of States in 2014, the CAADP Partnership Platform also reaffirms the central role of farmers, men and women, as well as small-medium entrepreneurs as key players to foster decisions on matters of economic policy in Africa.

“By strengthening the position of farmers, women and youth in the value chains we should aim at reducing inequality and creating a more equitable society,” Dr Mayaki said.

Mrs Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the African Union Commission, echoed Dr Mayaki by stating the CAADP has put in place several programmes on the ground that are yielding results, and are inclusive of African citizens.

In referring to the Malabo Declaration, Professor Edith de Vries, Director-General at the South African Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry emphaised that all stakeholders need to hold themselves accountable in CAADP for concrete results on the ground.

During a media briefing, Dr Mayaki stated that the energy so far focused on the remobilisation of African States towards participatory and improved planning processes in agriculture, resulting in the design of more than 40 investment plans, some of which were carried out at 100% with significant results.

Speaking on the role of women in agriculture, Mrs. Estherine Fotabong, NEPAD Director of Programmes, said that CAADP has allowed a more structured way of thinking and planning in the agricultural sector. 

For Africa to achieve its full potential in agriculture and development, women have to be supported, encouraged and empowered through favourable policies, platforms and various mechanisms.

Beauty goes to farm: grooming a generation of ‘sexy’ agriculturists

Ghanaian Agronomist, Dr. Stella Ama Ennin, is leading the development of a Gender Action Plan as a necessity to rope in more women into agriculture – both at the researcher level and the farm level.

The target of the project, she says, is to increase the Ghana’s women agricultural researchers’ ratio to 40 percent within four leading research and educational institutions. These include the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the University of Development Studies, Tamale, the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) and the Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Dr. Ennin explains gender issues in crop production are important, hence the need for research development and technology dissemination to take into consideration the interest of women for sustainable development.

“Food security is fundamental; it’s about sovereignty – unless you’re able to feed your nation, you’re not an independent nation and the woman is critical”, she stated.

Young Ghanaian agricultural graduate, Kwabena Owusu, is happy to have studied with young ladies who had passion for farming and agriculture.

His undergraduate class of 120 had at least a quarter being females – and Kwabena had observed the numbers improve in his four year stay on campus, as the ladies competed strongly with their male colleagues for knowledge and skills.

But these young women had to suffer ridicule as they pursued their studies in agriculture. “They were said to be the ‘the unfashionable’ females on campus because of the way they dressed for field practical and they were also perceived to be bookworms and not fun to be around with”, Kwabena recalled.

Indeed a good number of women in Ghana shun agriculture as a course of study right from primary school, because of perceptions that farming as a profession is unfit for ‘beautiful girls’.

This is however not the situation today.

Dr. Ennin of Ghana’s Crop Research Institute (CRI) is an epitome of women’s role in making a difference in African agriculture. 

Dr. Ennin is the first Ghanaian woman to receive the National Best Agriculture Researcher award in 1994 and the only woman to have had the award till date. She is the first and only woman to have risen to the position of Chief Research Scientist, the highest level within the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

She has also served as the first female Deputy Director and recently received a 2012 Ghana Women of Excellence Award for her contributions to scientific research and agricultural development.

For her, beautiful, ‘sexy’ and educated young women can venture agriculture and be successful.

Women shy away because of the drudgery in production, she explained. “If agriculture is seen as a very profitable, descent, mechanized and not laborious work, then a lot of women will find it attractive”.

As an accomplished agricultural researcher, Dr. Ennin’s focus is to come up with improved ways of producing crops like maize, cowpea and soya beans – both at the research station and with farmers on the field.

She is currently involved in crop-livestock integration; introducing legumes as dual purpose crops for human consumption and as residue for animal feed in four African countries – Ghana, The Gambia, Benin and Mali.

“I find it very exciting to be a woman agricultural researcher”, she said. “As an agricultural researcher, whenever you go to the field you see that you’re among your contemporaries, because women are mainly the food producers”.

Believing in the role of women in agricultural production, she has set herself an ambition to inspire young ladies to become astute agricultural researchers, especially at the CSIR where women constitute less than 20 percent of the 700 workforce.

“Other women are hopeful and can dream bigger because of me”, she said. “If you mentor a man you’ve mentored an individual, but if you mentor a woman you’ve mentored a nation”.

Mary Mamle Apetorgbor is the fourth woman to be mentored by Dr. Stella under the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) Fellowship, a career development program that equips top women scientists across sub-Saharan Africa to accelerate agricultural gains by strengthening their research and leadership skills, through tailored fellowships.

Mary’s career progression as a research scientist got stagnated at a point in time though she felt the need to reach for something more challenging in her field as a mushroom grower, researcher and trainer.

The mentorship opportunity, she says, has helped build her interpersonal skills and in less than a year into the programme, she has been able to build better teams, manage conflicts at the workplace and become more assertive working with farmer groups, most of who are women from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

“I want them to be better than me because the opportunities that they have, I never had them and there is no excuse”, Dr. Ennin said. “When you begin to mentor, it makes you less selfish, less self-centered; with mentoring, the potentially natural pride of being the first and only is not cherished; you are proud to be the first but not the only after a while”.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

A Date with Melinda Gates on Women and Agriculture

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 50^th anniversary of the Organization of African Unity (now African Union) and the 10^th 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