Phase 2: Gender Equality in Agribusiness, industries and markets (27 June – 10 July)

Les défis pour l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie, y compris la création de valeur ajoutée et la commercialisation des produits agricoles :

• L’intégration des femmes à tous les maillons des chaines de valeur et non seulement en bout de chaîne comme consommatrices
• L’introduction de technologies prenant en compte les besoins des femmes à tous les maillons des chaînes de valeur
• La maîtrise des technologies par les femmes
• L’accès et la maîtrise des marchés et circuits de commercialisation par les femmes
• La transformation des femmes en de véritables entrepreneures agricoles

Most of the small work in value chain addition and finishing touches are carried out by women.

When we consider, harvesting, processing which involves shelling, washing, cleaning drying, sorting, packaging and some other minor work, women are the majority workers in this feed

Unfortunately, most of this little works has no machinery support to make work easy

Imagine the group of women growing soybean, it takes enormous work to harvest manually, deshelled it manually, destine manually, and then still manually do value addition of converting it to soybean cake nor soybean oil or animal feed etc all to be carried out manually.

It becomes a tedious task adding value because the machineries to reduce the stress are not available.

Many of the women farmers would rather sell it off unprocessed instead of adding value to earn more funds.

Machineries that can easevwork will greatly encourage value addition and processing for more women which in turn means an increase in income

L’augmentation des revenus dans les ménages implique le travail laborieux des femmes et des jeunes qui constituent la couche la plus vulnérable à l’insécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle. C'est pourquoi, cette couche doit être appuyée en renforcement des capacités en vue qu'elle retrouve sa grande place dans cette activité de chaine de valeur.

Les femmes doivent être structurées et bien organisées en groupement, coopérative ou union pour facilier l'accès au crédit par les institutions de mircofinances

On this specific subject over the road forward, it’s very important to stress the existing accrued achievements in the consolidation of the actual preconditions for more women and gender friendly approaches to African agricultural transformation.

Since inception 2007, the WAAPP-1A countries have been working on strengthening agricultural productivity of root and tuber crops in Ghana, drought-resistant cereals in Senegal and rice in Mali. Overall, WAAPP-1A made satisfactory progress towards achieving its development objectives. All thirteen countries participating in the WAAPP-PPAAO within the ECOWAS have to date demonstrated, irrespective of their component execution phases (1, 2, 3 and 4) some institutional capacity to address utmost agricultural challenges within the region. Such advances have led to innovation platforms alongside centers of excellence as the Rice Center in Mali meant to be the regional reference center throughout the region.  

It is worth noting that while only 80 percent of the targets for the number of beneficiaries and the area under improved technologies were reached as of May 2016, the project is on track of reaching or even surpassing such targets.

Women, per say gender inclusion rates in most countries nears or exceed CORAF standards and improving with same prospects in youth inclusion as well…

Even at one year prior to earlier closing date (December 2012), all Project Development Objective indicators are on track of meeting their targets. Specifically: (i) project beneficiaries (180,000 in February 2012) are expected to reach 275,000 beneficiaries at the end of the project, and 40 percent of the beneficiaries are expected to be women; (ii) 17 technologies have already been released, all of which are showing potential yield improvement of 20 to 40 percent ; (iii) about 100,000 ha (out of the 171,000 ha expected) are covered with improved technologies made available through the project; and (iv) regional integration activities are being consolidated through the researchers exchange program which involved around 100 persons and through the exchange of genetic materials involving over 100 improved cultivars that have crossed the borders and are being tested and demonstrated in recipient countries.

For the AfDb and other institutional donors and partners, it would be advisable, to better assess and draw from already existing momentum on each and any other achievement under WAAPP-PPAAO to devise the roadmap ahead and consolidate such regional embryos of agricultural transformation potential. In most cases if not all, Women inclusion is in good standing as local participation in the whole agricultural value chain is evidenced through more and more processed products in the market with a level of finesse rarely achieved hitherto. On that note, it’s safe to assume that, in order to build from precedence and ongoing trends in current development agenda patterns, AfDB will have to reconsider WAAPP-PPAAO project results to inspire their regional framework for ECOWAS countries to collaborate in the implementation of national and regional agricultural strategies for technology generation, dissemination and use in local farming systems. With a major focus on Women and Youth, these interventions are expected to sustainably contribute to increased agricultural transformation and overall economic growth while reducing poverty in beneficiary countries.

Banks can contribute to improving women participation in agribusiness value chain by partnering with private investors to develop machineries that could enhance the females work in value addition.

Loans could be made available to registered and organized women group with the objective for the group to scale up with the process.

Trainings on value addition, packaging, marketing and distribution should be given to women group with the aim of stepping it down to subsequent numbers.

Cooperative establishment should be encouraged by women to monitor each others progress as they improve

Comprehensive survey of exisiting development potential with great gender focus should be leading the way forward...

Information is key and the Bank has a unique opportunity to grasp most WAAPP-PPAAO efforts brought forth to date.

From Goal 1 to Goal 17 across SDG matrix, collaboration, networking and synergzing are key.

Whether additional resources needed or shifting focus as the mere rationale, the Bank has a whole lot ways to support market potentials inherent to agricultural transformation in Africa...

Business Advisory Services provision sought to be the nexus of Bank takeover strategy in maintaining momentum in key regional agricultural development initiatives.

To date, in many ways, the International community is watching, African scourges on tantamount fronts remain burning... Until we devise local endogenous development models out of beaten paths, African Agricultural Transformation will remain a dormant idea...

All resources and human power needed are in place, from diaspora to local resource mobilization potential now more than ever before...

Agribusiness is a Nama agriculture where from the production to the commercialisation of the agriculture products we have many steps.In each step we have to promote gender equality. Give chance to women and girls to be involved in all processes.

What are the challenges to women’s engagement in priority value chains, agribusiness and industries, including value addition, and commercialization of agricultural products?
One of the outstanding challenges is to understand better women’s engagement in priority valuechains. This will require examining a few of the integrated frameworks that can help tease out agricultural landscape heterogeneous such as gender.

With respect to agricultural market place, gender differences become apparent when one looks at the realms of unpaid reproductive/care work in rural areas, non-remunerative productive work on the farm.  In May 2017, I visited some smallholder farm communities in Western Kenya, where key informants reported that women and youths (boys and girls) play a significant role in the agricultural labour force, women care for men, while men spend most of their time in the market place and return home in the evening demanding food. While this may not be a pair sample of the population, but low participation of men in the agricultural labour force was a matter of concern for the women farmers interviewed.

In an attempt to address these challenges, attention need to focus on the diverse roles of men and women, boys and girls in the different agricultural systems linked to land, economy, access to resources and food, production, processing, and consumption. Generally farmers, especially women expertise a number of challenges:
1) lack of access to credit to purchase inputs (seeds, fertilizers), 
2) decision-making power on sale of the produce and use of income generated, and
3) leadership position, to mention a few. 

How should the Bank address these challenges?
In order to understand and address these gender gaps, it is also important to adapt an integrated framework. For example, Feed the Future Gender Integration Framework, which is a USAID programmatic tool developed to understand the most critical constraints to women’s empowerment in the agricultural sector in a particular country or context. The Framework has seven dimensions: (1) Production: awareness of different possibilities for and decision-making power over agricultural production;
(2) Resources: access to and decision-making power over productive resources, including but not limited to land, credit, and equipment;
(3) Income: control over the use of income and expenditures;
(4) Leadership: social participation, including leadership in the community and ability to voice opinions in public;
(5) Time: ability to choose a workload that allows adequate and satisfactory time for non-work activities;
(6) Human capital: having adequate skill and knowledge to productively use resources, new technologies, and information to improve the household’s economic situation; and
(7) Technology: access to beneficial technologies. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) measures the first five dimensions. It is thus important to unpack a set of causal pathways that link gendered differences with social norms, economic constraints, institutions, international processes, and policy prescriptions.

It is crucial to understand and support women’s participation through addressing the gender gaps within the seven dimension of the integrated framework across the agricultural value chains from production, processing, aggregation, distribution to consumerism.

Women have less assess to agricultural resources. Giving women similar assess as men to resources will increase production on women's farms in developing countries. This will increase total agricultural production in developing countries. and in turn lessen the number of starving populace in the whole world.

Victoria

Les défis sont nombreux notamment :

• Accès à  la terre;
• Manque de Technologie pour la conservation des produits agricoles;
• Nom accès à la machine pour la transformation; 
• Inégalité de sexes dans l'agroalimentaire;
• Nom implication effective dans les prises de décision; 
• Elles ne contrôlent pas les ressources étant le baromètre de la société; 
• La formation en technique culturales à renforcer;
• Aller vers une autonomisation effective et digne de nom etc. 

La femme étant le baromètre de la société, doit être representée sur toutes les chaînes pour que le développement soit une réalité. Donc je suis très contente pour ma participation à cette discussion et je remercie les organitrices pour l'initive, car nous devons prendre notre destin en main.

Bonjour à toutes et à tous !
Les défis pour l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie, y compris la création de valeur ajoutée et la commercialisation des produits agricoles reposent dans le renforcement des capacités des femmes (Cadres,productrices et agents d'encadrement). 

    Les Institutions financières de développement (IFD), y compris la BAD et d'autres partenaires de développement, doivent  appuyer l'engagement des femmes dans ces sous-secteurs (agroalimentaire).

    la BAD pourrait aider à relever ces défis en finançant les programmes et projets spécifiques et sensible au genre notamment la poursuite de la diffusion et la vulgarisation à grande échelle des modules du projet C4CP/IFDC/USAID.

l'initiative ENABLE (Encourager les emplois novateurs dans l’agroalimentaire) pourrait être utilisée pour renforcer l'égalité entre les sexes dans ces sous-secteurs à travers l'appui et l'implication des autres pays du C4 plus les structures  appuyés par le CORAF dans le même contexte en multipliant les crénaux porteurs (chaînes de valeur).

  Les réussites sur l'autonomisation des femmes dans l'agroalimentaire, l'agro-industrie et les marchés agricoles pourraient être amplifiées par la BAD par le financement des projets femmes.

Women have been actively involved in agricultural production but on the lower levels of cultivation which involve alot of labour work. In many cases, they are not involved in marketing of agricultural produce. This is due to some factors such as:

i. Lack of enough knowledge on accessing the markets

This is caused by lack of education and people to pass on important knowledge in the rural areas.

ii. Wrong mindset

There has been wrong mindset in our cultures that women cannot carry out more technical jobs and therefore the few who try get discouraged.

iii. Women need to be more pro-active

I feel as Women we have not been more pro-active and more so in the agricultural sector. We need to forge forward despite the challenges that could be experienced on the way. Nothing comes easily.

This is a very interesting topic. In the past women have been involved in valeu addition projects and projects that promotes access to markets. My Opinion is that, Value addition comes with entrepreneurial skills and business management skills. most intervations that we implement have forced rural women to go into businesses simply because it is a project. Again projects have gone on the groung and mobilised farmers into cooperatives simply bacause it is a project that will work with cooperatives. As a result, we have cooperatives in the community that are not vibrant and just on paper. And we have value addition projects that phase out after the project has phased out. I am an entrepreneurship and a business trainer and in my opinion, Intervations, such as these are better handled by women or anybody that are already doing something little on their own, but require a hand to upscale because the entrepreneurial spirit is already there. But most initiatives has formed new cooperatives with people that are only interested in the hand outs yet when the project phases out the initiative goes as well. Lets rethink our approaches if the women that we target with an intervation, have potential to scale it beyond project and play a meangful role in a value chain.

AFDB, can promote Public  Private Partnerships that will mostly benefit women in agribusiness and agro processing indusries by directly inducing these Public Private Partnerships. Most of the times, PPPs are not just born, its either they are Public led, or Company led or Donor led. Despite how the  PPP came about, women who mostly do not meet the requirements of a commercial farmer interms of quality, quantity, capacity  etc have a chance to benefit from PPP's trainings, infrastructure development etc. a god example is that in Malawi there was a technical working group on Private sector led extension delivery that was developed and championed by Government ministry. Through this approach, most PPPs were created, and we saw private seed companies partnering with Civil societies to actually have smallholder farmers especially women grow seed for the companies. extension was provided by the compaies with support from government field workers. This saw women doubling their incomes in priority value chains. 

So PPP is a way to go. we shouldnt force our women farmers to be everything in the value chain. Every player in a value chain is very important if we are to remove inefficiencies in a chain. however, issues like technology, infrastracture, capital that women face can easily be delt with in a model PPP approach. 

Once again, my point is, AFDB can have a deliberate approach in its initiatives to target private sector or PPP inorder to benefit a female farmer in a value chain. 

Bonjour à  tous,
1-En ce qui concerne la question de l'accès à la terre des femmes, il fait au niveau national, inviter les vrais acteurs à savoir, les chefs religieux, de cantons, de villages etc... à débattre eux même Sur cette problématique à favoriser les femmes à l'accès  aux terres. Il faudra qu'à travers des ateliers et forums, ils puissent comprendre le rôle primordiale des femmes dans le défi agricole en Afrique. Une fois cette étape affranchie, ces élus locaux plus proche de leurs réalités sociales aux travers de forums, pourront eux même définir des politiques pour favoriser et protéger les femmes à l'accès aux terres.
2-Pour ce qui concerne l'accès  aux technologies et la garantie des intérêts des femmes: Sans une stratégie et politique agricole bien défini, il sera très difficile de réussir le pari. Il est montré que, les femmes en association, réussissent mieux à augmenter la production, le revenu et arrivent plus facilement à avoir accès  aux lignes de crédit et technologies appropriés. Pour ma part je pense que chaque pays doit définir  une politique agricole par région. Par exemple le manioc, la tomate et le riz à savalou. Ce qui permettra à tous les acteurs principalement féminin dans la chaîne de valeur et production de mieux défendre leurs intérêts. Les partenaires privés pourront mieux définir des politiques par rapport a ces cibles  de production, le gouvernement et les partenaires financiers sauront dans quelles mesures ils pourront orienter leur aide plus efficacement. Il est plus facile de maîtriser un virus spécifique dans une région donné plutôt que dans plusieurs. Dans une région où l'on produit de la mangue ou banane, l'on pourra implanter une petite usine de transformation (séchage, etc).
Si mon approche porte sa pertinence je pourrai mieux la développer prochainement
Merci 
Le défi sera relevé
Raoul Sessou
YPARD
00225 85 96 89 86

A major means of addressing the challenges in order to make adequate impact is to ensure that supports are targeted to women truly in need of supports, especially those at the grass-root level. This can be achieved by creation and promotion of financing schemes targeting women ONLY.​

Financing and encouraging women in agribusiness to shift from local production to industrialized farming and production, while providing leverage for proper business development and administration with an ultimate aim of maximizing profits from well managed cash flows.

I read daily about agro-industries, agriculture, marginalized or women excluded participating in agriculture value chains and wonder why do we study, discuss and keep evaluating what we already know. Discrimination against women. Firstly if women are marginalized, which they are, in agriculture then maybe it is time to start at the bottom and correct what is the cause. Agriculture. Agriculture is the science of cultivating the ground, including the harvesting of crops, and the rearing and management of livestock. Farming covers the implementation of agriculture. This could be either small scale, or large scale. There are different types of farming. A large farm is called plantation. Farming is a significant economic sector and with a plantation comes silos and barns. Agriculture is controlled by men mostly and for women to break through this barrier is virtually impossible. Therefore adopt a totally and radical new approach. If help was not on hand this discussion would not transpire.

Women need to set up Co-Op farming. Set up silos, set up containerized refrigeration and through repetitive farming, not agriculture, reduce handling loss, post- harvest loss and risk. The help on hand that I mention are the banks. African Development Bank, countries openly financially supporting empowerment of women and set up the plantations.

Each marginalized women 1 hectare farmer feeding into the co-op. Africa is vibrant with qualified women that can be applied to acquiring new markets for marginalized women. If not then this discussion is futile. Get farming right, set up the silos and post-harvest storage and you directly start to not only address poverty but eliminate it. What is needed for this to be successful is only women. Starve the local markets. Walk away from existing export markets and task the upper management of the plantations and co-ops with finding new markets. If I want to sell pineapples based on the enzyme bromelain that fights cancer I make sure my packaging makes mention of it. If you want to promote the cause of women you make mention of it.

Added value comes from processing fruits and veggies. Have the process facility on the plantation. Now women are not selling fresh bulk subject to risk of post-harvest. They are selling added value condensate or pure organic. Women of Africa need to break the genetic seed strangle-hold that the developed countries force down on Africa. No matter how much women want to participate in added value and agro-business as a whole it is not going to materialize under the current system. There radical change is necessary for women to empower themselves.

A Corporal in the army cannot empower himself with leadership orders and instructions because above that Corporal is a Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major etc. Pecking order or structural rank. There is no difference between the example and the reality. If the Corporal wants to make his own decisions there is only one way. Resign from the Military and start his own business. Women need to break out and give birth to a whole new industry.

So forget about agro-business, Agricultural Science and added value in its current form. Stick to farming the 1 hectare. Start a co-op and a plantation. Task the bright, talented business women to create the market then starve the present market and add the value and sell to the newly created market.

If farmers are throwing away (losing, risk, post-harvest loss, handling errors, manipulated markets etc.) then a cut in gate price by 40% of the market value for a guaranteed market makes perfect sense. Women need to start concentrating on developing their own market and for those that disagree or are hesitant to understand and accept this concept, please know one fact. Africa has its fair share of dynamic women capable of overcoming this marketing mountain.

Throw away the philosophy of “Better the Devil you know than the one you don’t know” and establish your market. Forget about everything else concerning agriculture, farming, agro-business etc. and concentrate on creating the market. Then farming follows, added value gets started and by this very empowerment of women, poverty is addressed, education is guaranteed and women become equal (if not better).

The only challenges to women’s engagement in priority value chains, agribusiness and industries, including value addition, and commercialization of agricultural products is the ability to truly believe in themselves and to break away from the present structures and corporations that men control, manipulate and harvest from. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) –including the AfDB- and other development partners do not fully support women’s engagement in all sectors of farming and if they did they would start sanctions on men-run agricultural corporations and forget about how to scale-up an existing business.

These businesses are coping and should therefore be addressed later, after marginalized 1 hectare poverty stricken women farmers have been helped, nurtured and come on-line in participation Banks will have to make a choice and address the challenges facing marginalized women. So many institutions refer to themselves as the “People Solution” the “Peoples Bank” etc. Does this reflect honesty, transparency and fair access or is this lip-service to ignore discrimination against women thereby marginalizing them and condemning them to abject poverty.

The ENABLE (Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment) Youth initiative cannot be used or utilized in any way to support gender equality in any sector because women need to break away, start their own agro-business and from there develop ENABLE that in turn will address employment and empowerment Success stories on empowering women in agribusiness, industries and markets should not be scaled up but in fact be brought on board to support and lead the way when women infant farmers under a new empowerment farming system can be left on their own and only monitored before any scaled-up policy. Any other approach condemns the 1 hectare marginalized women farmers even more and keeps them in dire farming conditions.

Quelques pistes de solutions pour lutter contre les inégalités dans Agro-alimentaire:

• Favoriser l'accès des terres aux femmes;
• Impliquet les femmes dans les prises de décision; 
• Formation des femmes en technologie de transformation des produits agricoles; 
• Formation en techniques culturales;
• Désenclaver des sites agricoles; 
• Formation pour accéder aux Fonds ou crédits; 
• Encourager les cultures Bio, pour la santé de l'Homme et l'environnement etc.

 Bien Cordialement 

Value added agricultural products in Africa starts with gender friendly mechanisms...
When you consider these:

• Misperception of Women role in post-harvest activities (which AfDB may take on to fix),
• 50%–60% cereal grains loss during post-harvest processes (processing, storage…),
• Lack of appropriate technology use in the value chain (which AfDB may leverage),
• Cumbersome chokepoints in African Intra trade environment;
• Lack of donor input coordination mechanisms along with value chain and gender in Africa’s Agriculture.

All the above, each in respect to their chain of effects, impacting actual productivity and value chain upscaling, limiting smallholders market outcome to the least of their production potential…This, no more no less is what the Bank has to be facing and addressing as the sole endogenous Financial Institution with the edge and leverage it takes, to overhaul development potentials across the regions, with focus to gender friendly policy framework.

In the absence of proper ownership claim expected of regional endogenous institutional organizations, unfortunately we will be witnessing devastating intrusions of foreign direct investment in policy matters affecting our ability to conduct intra trade initiatives in Africa.

Obviously regional trade integration has for so long been a strategic objective in Africa, despite limited successes in circumventing tariffs across regional communities, african domestic markets remain highly fragmented. For the AfDB to capture the full potential of its partner countries, there are a range of non-tariff and regulatory barriers that need to be addressed that are still raising  transaction costs and limit the movement of goods, services, people and capital across our borders in Africa. AfDB for example could be a great asset for African countries to serve, direct and leverage the formerly negotiated EPA imposed on by the EU… whilst similar unilateral deals are taking place across the region on a periodic basis, such contribute to disrupting our ability to trade and exchange among Africans and opens easy access channels to European markets with devastating consequences to local food security at large.

Just last month, in Berlin on Monday, 12 June 2017, Chancellor Merkel has invited the heads of state and government of African partner countries to the international G20 Africa Partnership Conference. How great and culturally competent would it be, if such partnership call was convened by a major African organization on more frequent basis…

Nigerian yam although well praised, is being subject to an initial extensive export phase for no less than72 tons of yam to the United Kingdom. Food and Agricultural Organization estimated that Nigeria accounts for 61% of the total yam output in the world, but the tuber has not been exported until lately… Ghana stood to earn $4bn (£3bn) from its yam exports in the next three to four years. Like many other countries in Africa, Senegal with a difficult choice, between relying on the prospect of endogenous financial institutions taking charge, can only be perplexed, on the waiting bench: China pumping $60 billion into African development left Alassane Samba, the former head of Senegal’s Oceanic Research Institute, perplexed enough to put it this way: “It’s hard to say no to China when they are building your roads.”…

Enough of a narrative to justify a renewed interest from the AfDB to capitalize on some sense of patriotic ownership, to spend time and money to build on already existing aggregates of research-based-evidence of our women AgroEntrepreneurs contributions and other actors of the Value Chain in Africa, to internalize the benefits of local financing opportunities, a long term return vehicle of endogenous development in Africa, for Africa, and not ONLY serving the expropriation enterprise of foreign financial interests already land masters on our own backyard.

For our women in the Transformation of Africa’s Agriculture, responsive policy choices are to be taken and properly applied with focus to sound outreach and communication, based on prevalent illiteracy rates within and across our constituents…

La nature même démontre que l'existance de la vie passe par les femmes. Nous voyons aussi le rôle social qu'elles assument chaque jour.

Tout est une question de volonté en tout plan.

• Est ce que les engagements publics pris au niveau national sont appliqués selon les clauses?
• Est ce qu'une institution comme la BAD, publie officiellement le rapport des engagements pris par les gouvernants?
• Ne devrions nous par en finir avec l'impunité en tout point?

Si ces questionnements sont durement considérés dans les actions et poliques en faveurs des femmes dans l'agro-industrie et les chaines de valeur, les résultats seront plus positifs. 

Quels sont les défis pour l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie, y compris la création de valeur ajoutée et la commercialisation des produits agricoles ?

• Le principal défi à relever pour faciliter l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie est celui de la formation à la base. Mais pour atteindre l’étape de formation des femmes à mieux s’intégrer à la chaîne de valeurs agricoles, il est important de noter qu’il existe d’autres entraves ou nœuds non visibles dont il faut tenir compte dans la stratégie à mettre en œuvre. Il s’agit entre autre de la nécessité d’amener certains acteurs clés de la vie communautaire à la base à changer certains de leurs comportements imposés par les coutumes ou liés aux considérations historique, traditionnelle ou socio-culturelles des peuples. Car, au regard des réalités sociologiques, il est difficile de concevoir dans certaines zones reculées en Afrique que la femme puisse initier, porter et jouer pleinement un rôle important dans la chaîne de valeur prioritaire de l’agroalimentaire et de l’agro-industrie.

• L’autre défi à relever est celui du conseil, de l’encadrement et de l’accompagnement technique à travers des groupements de femmes ou des cellules techniques locales d’appui. Car la formation seule ne suffit pas pour mettre à la femme d’intégrer la chaîne de valeur et de jouer pleinement son rôle. Malgré la formation, les risques de découragement et d’abandon sont élevés à la moindre difficulté rencontrée par la femme dans un univers déjà prédisposé à lui rendre le parcours difficile.

Certaines pistes peuvent être explorées pour permettre aux femmes d’avoir les moyens de leur autonomisation et faciliter leur engagement dans l’agro-alimentaire et l’agro-industrie en Afrique. Il s’agit, entre autres, de :

• accompagner les programmes scolaires et les programmes de formation professionnelle à la base et surtout dans les campagnes pour donner aux femmes, les bases techniques nécessaires pour pleinement jouer leur rôle dans la chaîne de valeur.
• Encourager et accompagner la création des centres de formation professionnelle et d’accompagnement dans les campagnes et zones reculées
• Mettre en place des cellules techniques de renseignement, d’appui, d’entraides et d’accompagnement des femmes et des groupements de femmes dans les sous-secteurs indiqués.
• mettre en œuvre des séries de campagnes de communication pour un changement de comportement à la base (en identifiant les contraintes à l’épanouissement des femmes dans ces sous-secteurs ; – en initiant et mettant en œuvre des actions de sensibilisation envers les chefs traditionnels, les chefs religieux, les chefs coutumiers, les chefs de collectivités et les chefs de familles, les catégories socio-professionnelles et vers les populations en général pour changer d’une part les mentalités et faire d’autre part de chacune de ces cibles, de véritables acteurs et porteurs du changement voulu à la base.

Pour relever le défi, la BAD pourrait intervenir dans 3 domaines importants :

• Mettre en place avec les organisations sous régionales et les Etats, des campagnes de communications pour un changement de comportement des populations et de responsabilisation des femmes.
• Appuyer les Etats à créer et encourager la formation professionnelle des femmes dans les domaines concernés.
• Appuyer les Etats à mettre en place des centres d’appui, d’entraide, et d’accompagnement des femmes.

• Quels sont les défis pour l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie, y compris la création de valeur ajoutée et la commercialisation des produits agricoles ?

• Le principal défi à relever pour faciliter l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie est celui de la formation à la base. Mais pour atteindre l’étape de formation des femmes à mieux s’intégrer à la chaîne de valeurs agricoles, il est important de noter qu’il existe d’autres entraves ou nœuds non visibles dont il faut tenir compte dans la stratégie à mettre en œuvre. Il s’agit entre autre de la nécessité d’amener certains acteurs clés de la vie communautaire à la base à changer certains de leurs comportements imposés par les coutumes ou liés aux considérations historique, traditionnelle ou socio-culturelles des peuples. Car, au regard des réalités sociologiques, il est difficile de concevoir dans certaines zones reculées en Afrique que la femme puisse initier, porter et jouer pleinement un rôle important dans la chaîne de valeur prioritaire de l’agroalimentaire et de l’agro-industrie.

• L’autre défi à relever est celui du conseil, de l’encadrement et de l’accompagnement technique à travers des groupements de femmes ou des cellules techniques locales d’appui. Car la formation seule ne suffit pas pour mettre à la femme d’intégrer la chaîne de valeur et de jouer pleinement son rôle. Malgré la formation, les risques de découragement et d’abandon sont élevés à la moindre difficulté rencontrée par la femme dans un univers déjà prédisposé à lui rendre le parcours difficile.

Quels sont les défis pour l’engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l’agroalimentaire et agro-industrie, y compris l’ajout de valeur et la commercialisation des produits agricoles ?
La filière étant un ensemble de chaînes de valeurs imbriquées depuis l’amont d’un produit jusqu’à son aval, chaque segment apportant plus de valeur ajoutée au précédent. Il a été observé que les femmes sont plus présentes au niveau de la transformation et de la mise en marché domestique des produits et que les défis auxquels elles sont confrontées sont énormes et multiformes :

Pour opérer dans l’agro alimentaire, les femmes au Sénégal se regroupent généralement en groupement d’intérêt économique (GIE) ou groupement de promotion féminine (GPF) en  décidant de créer en leur sein une micro entreprise ou une agro-industrie. Celle -ci est une structure beaucoup plus évoluée que la précédente. Le défi premier est d’avoir une unité de transformation artisanale ou industrielle répondant aux normes d’hygiène,  de qualité et de compétitivité.

Le deuxième défi est la formation des membres de l’unité sur les modules relatifs aux différents produits à transformer  afin d’acquérir l’expertise requise. Une formation théorique et pratique avec délivrance de supports pédagogiques pour mieux aider dans l’opérationnalisation des séquences est impérative.

L’approvisionnement en matières premières de qualité et en stocks suffisants constitue une étape très importante du processus susceptible d’impulser  l’ajout de valeur souhaité et d’accroître in fine la valeur marchande du produit

La question des emballages assortie à celle de l’autorisation FRA demeurent des enjeux majeurs si l’on veut relever le défi de la mise en marché

Ces deux (02) derniers problèmes soulevés (l’approvisionnement en intrants et la distribution du produit final)  trouveraient des solutions si la structuration des organisations voire leur professionnalisation est réglée au travers d’une mise en réseau des principaux acteurs de la chaîne de valeur transformation. Le réseau sera un espace d’apprentissage et d’échanges d’expérience et de biens entre des zones de grandes productions et des zones de consommation.

Le financement des opérations est une problématique transversale .   En Afrique, les femmes ont toujours eu très peur  du système bancaire formel ( les banques commerciales ou les Structures Financières Décentralisées, SFD) en raison des taux d’intérêts  jugées parfois prohibitifs et des traites mensuelles le plus souvent imposées aux clients sans aucune négociation entre les deux protagonistes. C’est ce qui explique le recours quasi permanent des femmes  aux tontines dont le principe repose sur le consensus et  la solidarité. L’inconvénient de cette pratique est de ne pas pouvoir disposer de suffisamment de ressources financières surtout quand il s’agit de mettre en œuvre des activités sollicitant de gros investissements.

Comment la BAD pourrait elle aider à relever ces défis ?
Par un financement durable de projets structurants au service des femmes. Recensez en rapport avec des projets comme le PPAAO/WAAPP des technologies sensibles au genre (technologies agro-alimentaires, machines confectionnées pour diminuer la pénibilité du travail ou pour accroître la productivité etc.) et apporter les subventions requises pour une autonomisation socio-économique des groupes –cibles, en opérant bien sûr sur toute la chaîne de valeurs.

Comment les IFDs y compris la BAD et d’autres partenaires de développement ont-ils appuyé l’engagement des femmes dans ces sous secteurs ?
Il va s’en dire que chaque institution a son cœur de métier différent de l’autre et les synergies ne peuvent être que bénéfiques. Financer des femmes opératrices de semences s’est avéré un défi majeur pour le programme de productivité agricole en Afrique de l’Ouest (PPAAO/WAAPP) en rapport avec le projet de l’USAID (PSAO/WASP) et les quelques résultats concluants obtenus en matière de formation sur les techniques de production de semences, de facilitation pour l’accès des femmes aux bonnes terres et aux intrants devront être consolidés. Nous lançons un plaidoyer pour que des partenaires viennent renforcer ces initiatives.

Quelles réussites sur l’autonomisation des femmes dans l’agro-alimentaire, l’agro-industrie et les marchés agricoles pourraient être amplifiées par la BAD ? 
Il serait intéressant de revisiter toutes les technologies genre sensibles présentées lors du forum d’Abidjan (du 07 au 09 juin 2017) par les WAAPP/Pays pour mesurer l’offre disponible et les perspectives en vue de l’autonomisation socio-économique des femmes

Aminata SOW Kane, responsable genre et développement social

PPAAO/WAAPP SENEGAL

My name is Alexandra Spieldoch. I am the Executive Director of Compatible Technology International (CTI), which hopes to strengthen African value chains by designing postharvest technologies with and for African women smallholders as well as to provide needed training (technical, business, food safety) and new opportunities product development. We are most interested in incentivizing African supply chain partners for local manufacturing (or at least, final assembly) and distribution. Some of the challenges we see include too much emphasis on th innovations themselves and much less emphasis on the distribution challenges.  Other challenges include the lack of financial capital to explore emerging markets. In addition to women farmers needing access to credit and loans, there is also a need to invest in setting up the ecosysem of partnerships with private sector partners.  Last August 2015, CTI organized a national platform on postharvest challenges/opportunities for women in Senegal. We hope to organize a 2nd one on July 20th that looks not only at Senegal but also at West Africa as a whole. I invite anyone who can make it to attend! 

FYI, in Senegal, we are working to strengthen the pearl millet value chain with a tool that strips/threshes and winnows the grain. In Southern Africa, we are focused simple technologies for groundnut value chains and the importance of aflatoxin free food for consumption and sale.  

Lastly, we have partnerships with companies like General Mills, Buhler (which is the largest food technology company in the world), Cargill, etc. which bring important knowledge and expertise to the programs we are working. My vision is to have a network of women leaders in agro-processing FEEDING AFRICA with financial support from the multilateral and regional banks as well as the private food sector. 

I am honored to participate in this group and to learn from and listen to you, 

Alexandra (alexandra@compatibletechnology.org)

www.compatibletechnology.org

What are the challenges to women’s engagement in priority value chains, agribusiness and industries, including value addition, and commercialization of agricultural products?
NAIP could be assisting in coordinating efforts to support women in priority value chains through clear targets in numbers and ratio of female entrepreneurs, girls benifitting from both credit lines, extension services (specific those towards improving management, cooperative movements capacity building, processes for certification and product standards; marketing support). Most of the NAIP's are lacking in gender sensitivity, have no gender sensitive budgets and gender indicators. AfDB could assist Ministries in charge of commerce, agriculture and women affairs to collaborate and improve NAIP's in terms of guarantees for reducing gender gaps How should the Bank address these challenges? promote the use of gender sensitive budgetting in NAIP's and assist monitoring and evaluation of gender indicators; the process should lead to reporting at national level on reduction of gender gaps in agricbusiness and value chain development efforts.

How could the ENABLE (Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment) Youth initiative, be used to support gender equality in these sub-sectors? Create at the level of the specific value chain platforms a "gender support group" and initiate gender indicators monitoring systems that are participatory and measuring both qualitative and quantitative indicators with reporting at the level of Financial and technical partners platforms and ministerial level.

Quels sont les défis pour l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie, y compris la création de valeur ajoutée et la commercialisation des produits agricoles ?
Les chaînes de valeurs agricoles ne peuvent être efficientes que si elles associent aussi bien les femmes que les hommes et qu’elles lèvent tous les obstacles à leur participation. L’inégalité entre les sexes a un coût économique élevé ; elle conduit à un gaspillage de ressources humaines et une perte d’opportunités pour l’innovation.

Les défis à relever :
Cartographier les activités et identifier les contraintes liées au genre
Les hommes et les femmes jouent des rôles différents et ont des responsabilités différentes dans les différents maillons d’une chaine de valeur ; il est donc nécessaire de cartographier ces maillons. Ils (hommes et femmes) font face à des contraintes différentes concernant l’accès et le contrôle des ressources nécessaires à la réalisation de leurs activités. Ces contraintes ont un impact sur la chaîne de valeur car elles peuvent affecter le volume et la qualité des produits.

Formulation des contraintes liées au genre et évaluation de leurs conséquences.
Cela consistera à identifier les facteurs causant les disparités entre les genres et les conséquences de ces contraintes sur un programme d’intervention. Cela aboutira à la formulation des relations causales entre ces facteurs et des actions de développement d’une chaîne de valeur offrant des opportunités égales entre les genres.

Agir afin d’éliminer les contraintes liées au genre
Cela consistera à établir des priorités concernant les actions possibles permettant d’éliminer les contraintes liées au genre afin de construire une chaîne de valeur compétitive et rentable offrant des opportunités égales aux hommes et aux femmes.

Comment les Institutions financières de développement (IFD), y compris la BAD et d'autres partenaires de développement, ont-ils appuyé l'engagement des femmes dans ces sous-secteurs ?
L’étude intitulée «L'autonomisation économique des femmes africaines grâce à la participation équitable aux chaînes de valeur agricoles » réalisée par la BAD estime qu’il faut renforcer la productivité des Africaines et leur place dans la commercialisation de produits à forte valeur ajoutée pour que l’agriculture se développe en Afrique.

Sur cette base la BAD a développé une stratégie sur le genre 2014 – 2018 reposant sur la commercialisation de produits à forte valeur ajoutée pour l’autonomisation des Africaines. La BAD intervient donc à travers trois grands domaines d’action. D’une part, augmenter le nombre d’agro-entrepreneurs à grande échelle, en leur fournissant un accès au financement et à la formation, et en améliorant les liens entre les marchés régional et mondial. Ensuite s’assurer que les femmes sont rémunérées, en en faisant des copropriétaires, en améliorant leur productivité, et en les formant pour les doter des compétences de base en matière de gestion d’entreprise. Et enfin, accroître l'accès des femmes aux marchés de niche, en produisant et en commercialisant des produits destinés aux femmes uniquement. Cette stratégie s’appuis sur quatre spéculations : le cacao, le café, le coton et le manioc.
Source: AfDB (2015). Economic of African Women through Equitable Participation in Agricultural Value Chains. African Development Bank

Les actions ont été également menées par le FIDA dans le renforcement des interventions de l’Etat et du secteur privé dans le développement agricole en faveur des femmes (accès aux moyens de production, transformation et commercialisation). Il y a eu également le développement des marchés fonctionnels et des institutions pour femmes exerçant dans l’agroalimentaire. Cela a conduit à la promotion de l’augmentation des rendements et des technologies d’économie de main-d’œuvre sur le terrain, ainsi que l’expansion des terres cultivables
Source : Kingsbury, D.(2010). Questions de fonds relatives aux chaînes de valeur, aux opportunités et à LA croissance: rôles des  projets de finances conjointement par le FIDA. Dakar, Sénégal

Comment la BAD pourrait-elle aider à relever ces défis ?

• La BAD pourrait financer des études préliminaires pour identifier les maillons de la chaine de valeur dans lesquels les femmes sont plus impliquées et les contraintes auxquelles elles font faces.
• Financer le développement des technologies afin d’accroitre le potentiel de commercialisation des femmes ou investir dans la recherche pour le développement des variétés améliorées.
• Dans les projets de promotion du genre dans l’agriculture, la BAD pourrait mettre en place une cellule de veille qui s’assurera que les activités prévues sont exécutées même avant la fin du projet

Comment l'initiative ENABLE (Encourager les emplois novateurs dans l’agroalimentaire) pourrait-elle être utilisée pour renforcer l'égalité entre les sexes dans ces sous-secteurs?
Les femmes sont les plus vulnérables en ce qui concerne l’accessibilité aux  ressources et de prises de décisions. Elles ont plus de difficulté à avoir accès au crédit car ne disposant pas souvent de ressources (terre et autres immobiliers,…) pour servir de garantie. Cet état de choses aggrave les inégalités entre sexes. Cependant, les femmes participent activement dans les activités agroalimentaires. L'initiative ENABLE pourrait mettre en place un mécanisme de financement des femmes qui serait plus flexible (taux d’intérêt, délai de remboursement, exigence de garanties moins contraignante). Aussi, l’organisation des formations pour renforcer la capacité techniques et de gestion d’unité agroalimentaire aiderait les femmes à s’autonomiser. Par ailleurs, au-delà de l’égalité des sexes, l’initiative ENABLE pourrait être élargie à la prise en compte du genre en général d’autant plus que les jeunes sont également confrontés aux contraintes susmentionnées. Ainsi, en visant les jeunes, en dehors de la facilitation d’accès au financement et de renforcement des capacités, l’initiative pourrait encourager l’insertion des jeunes au niveau des services (création de service de payement innovants, prestation de services aux unités agro-alimentaires, création de plateforme de distribution des produits alimentaires et agricoles en général, etc.). Bien entendu, cette attention dont bénéficieraient les femmes et les jeunes ne se ferait pas en défaveur des hommes.

Quelles réussites sur l'autonomisation des femmes dans l'agroalimentaire, l'agro-industrie et les marchés agricoles pourraient être amplifiées par la BAD?
Des cas de réussite d’autonomisation sont enregistrés au niveau des femmes impliquées dans les chaînes de valeur soja au Bénin. Ces femmes sont dans les activités de transformation de soja en différents sous-produits dont notamment le lait et le fromage. Elles sont en groupement et disposent d’unités de transformation commune. Cette activité génératrice de revenus leur assure une indépendance financière et renforce leur leadership dans leur communauté à travers les différentes formations et des voyages d’échange. Il faut cependant noter que des initiatives de mise en groupement des femmes et de création d’unité de transformation pour ces groupements n’ont pas toujours été concluantes à cause des problèmes de gestion et de dévouement réel à l’activité. Ainsi, les facteurs de réussite de ces groupements dans les chaînes de valeur soja et les modèles d’affaires et de gestion sur lesquels ils fonctionnent méritent d’être étudiés et capitalisés pour d’éventuelles amplification (scale –up).

Mme Mireille GABA GIP
Juriste 
Chargée de la formation à la FEFA (Fédération des Femmes Entrepreneures et Femmes d’Affaire du Bénin

Some studies demonstrate that mentoring and information from peers are key to the success for women in agribusiness. According to Cirera and Qasim (2014),

Women who had male role models were between 55 and 74 percent more likely to cross over into higher-productivity sectors than women who had no such access. Fifty-four percent interacted with other business owners at least once a month, while only 39 percent of non-crossovers did.

But who could be a good mentor for women farmers and entrepreneurs in Africa? What characteristics and qualities should mentors possess? Where and how could development partners find good mentors?

Thank you for your insights in advance!

Nozomi

[Reference]

Cirera, X., & Qasim, Q. (2014). Supporting Growth-Oriented Women Entrepreneurs (No. 23654). The World Bank.

What are the challenges to women’s engagement in priority value chains, agribusiness and industries, including value addition, and commercialization of agricultural products?
Apart from the issues of poverty and lack of capital, skills and social norms which are key factors hindering women’s effective and profitable involvement in value chains and agribusiness, women have what we call “powerless social networks” so they may not have acess to  the necessary or appropriate role models for the relevant information they need to engage in successful business enterprises.  They are therefore not be able to take advantage of whatever new or old business opportunities that exist to improve upon their businesses.

We also need to take into consideration the fact that women can participate at different nodes of the agricultural value chain and be successful agripreneurs given the right  guidance and training. The key challenge is how to provide the right mix of PPP, entrepreneurship and the effective participation of women in value chains.  Given the loads of research in agricultural research and development, how do we include research findings in agribusiness to ensure women do benefit from them and adopt them to enhance their own economic development? 

There is the need for agribusiness incubation for women as one of the main approaches   to empower women . This can target women already involved in agribusiness and value addition in the value chain as well as new entrants to the market. By incubation we are talking of a business support process that enables the acceleration of successful business development and start-up for the identified business persons who in this case are women.  Such services can vary from advisory services, networking and facilitating access to finance and even product development or improvement.

With and earlier experience with  a FARA pilot project called UNiBRAIN which brought  together business persons ,academia and private sector, the project used the technical expertise of the universities and business owners and banks to help develop start-ups for  the selected agribusinesses .  The project was not a women specific one but we developed toolkits that guided the integration of gender into the incubation process. Moreover, since most women need the basics in entrepreneurship, the bank could encourage an incubation process which will start with “hand holding” for these women, teaching them how to even handle the low hanging fruits in agribusiness through the incubation support process to the time where they have  fully matured into  profitable business ventures.

In cases where women are already involved in agribusiness, they can be assisted to improve on their business plans, product enhancement and access to financing and markets. 

The Agri-business concept is important for the commercialisation of agriculture. Women need to be supported to engage in agriculture as a business and move from the substistence mode of operation. One of the effective ways of engagigng with women at this level is to have them come together in commodity association groupings. Here they can aggregate their produce, engage in price negotiatios, save on transport costs of transporting produce.

Groups provide a safe space for women to interact and even receive relevant extension support. Access to finance is key to successful agri-business...in a group, women can access loans and act as collateral for each other especially where individual collateral might be difficult with formal banking institutions.

I wish community female farmers will receive capacity building in aspect of agribusiness at the grassroots.

Thanks

AFDB should partner more with women groups and women led groups. It will be nice if the bank can have some people to explore the interior rural people.

70% of food processing are done by the rural, non literate women. They have no access to bank because they don't even keep money in the bank.

They can only be reached through some rural associations and not the cooperate women group.

In most cases finance and helps release hardly get to the right channels thereby creating no impact in food production and processing

Private investor should could partner with AFDB in the area of designing easy tools and processing machineries for rural setting.

The private partners should have it in mind that most rural areas are not on the grid so they should design something that could fits the different communities

• Drying of chilli pepper is usually an issue in the rainy season.
• Improper drying alliw it to grow mucor that breeds aflatoxin which causes cancer in children and adults.
• A solar dryer partnership with AFDB and private sector could rescue several women in that vicinity. 
• It means more money for the women
• Reduction in the case of cancer
• Increase in production because more people will join the network
• There is a whole lot of projects that can be achieved through such partnership if its nicely and properly managed. 

I wish to share this article I have written on the subject for information.

Please note that one critical argument I wish to put across is that manufacturing value added will enhance uptake of new technologies and increased participation of women in the global market as partners.  

Addressing the issue of equitable benefit sharing with regard to men and women is a key issue that needs to be addressed if women are to benefit from value addition activities in agriculture. Women though, are said to be over represented as employees while men are tthe employers in the value addition segments of the agricultural value chain. What we observe is a re-play of the same gender pecking order evident in the production systems. Investment in value addition activities requires capital inputs that women are often unable to afford. Moreover, access to financing proves a challenge too, due to their lack of collateral (land which is highly regarded as collateral for credit by most financial instituions lies in the hands of the men in society). 

The public sector can work with financial institutions and identify both individual and women's groups that are engaged in value addition. Once identified and assessed as having a profitable business model, these can be provided with loans to invest in better processing technologies and scale out production.

Furtherstill, most private invsetors are under obligation to conduct some social responsibility functions; some of these investors are telecommunication companies, machine fabricators or financial instituions. These can be encouraged to work with women's groups by designing a version of their core products that is more user friendly for the women.This will be their way of giving back to the community.

Lastly, it is usually difficult for women and female enterprenuers to navigate the male dominated beaurocratic formalization processes for their business, which is one reason women are over represented in the informal sector. Decentralization of business registration and certification procedure or even cutting back on the existing bottlenecks will make the process easier for women to undertake and upgrade them from the informal to the formal sector thus enable them enjoy the rewards of conducting formal businesses.

• La  BAD peut promouvoir des partenariats public-privé qui seront principalement à l'avantage des femmes dans l'agro-alimentaire et les agro-industries en permettant aux structures publiques d'acquérir diverses compétences (techniques, conceptuelles, matérielle et de gestion) pour accompagner les activités du privé et suivre; en permettant au privé d'avoir également des compétences en gestion, maîtrise de l'organisation, en réseautage, marketing, leadership et entreprenariat féminin.
• Plaider pour la prise en compte de la dimension genre en mettant en exergue l'importance, l'engagement des femmes dans la réalisation d'une activité/action et particulièrement dans les activités du secteur agro-alimentaire et agro-industries. Parallèlement financer l'examen de ces plans d'investissement en Agriculture pour avoir plus l'opportunité de proposer cet intégration du genre dans le document et dans leur application.
• L'initiative ENABLE peut outiller les jeunes femmes dans l'agro-alimentaire en encourageant leur participation dans les rencontres nationales en leur permettant de mettre en pratique leurs bonnes idées et tout en respectant leurs propres efforts.

Emma

In a research conducted a few years ago by a group i was part of, we issued questionnaires to ascertain the contributio nof women to the community in terms of agricultural production. Although our aim was not on value chain, it was found that the household head (mostly oldest male) in the household was to take the decision on the use of the family land. They did not have a say in what to produce and what the income was used for. It was concluded that the role of women’s in cultivation, harvesting and storage was greatly underplayed. Their contribution to the agricultural processing was not considered to be important and this affects.

This is indeed an extremely important and interesting discussion, bringing together diverse perspectives and solutions.

All the considerations mentioned in this thread shed the light on the wide range of issues. Let’s add yet another dimension to examine the challenges women face in engaging in value chains and agribusiness:

Women have a triple burden: whatever income-generating activity rural women engage in, they still need to bear the burden of reproductive and community work. Moreover, the tasks that rural women usually perform are tedious, not leading to productivity and not allowing them to secure a sufficient income. On top of that, women are time-poor: it perpetuates their difficulties in accessing skills development opportunities, finance products (they do not have time to gather information about loans, bureaucracy and to get finance literacy trainings), business development services and in actively participating in cooperatives or other form of rural organizations.
This has led to a feminization of rural poverty.

Beyond the fact that women encounter strong obstacle to contribute to Africa’s positive rural transformation, there is another negative side effect: it makes rural women more reliant on their children to supplement family income, and to assist in the too many duties they are responsible for. This is especially the case for girls, who often assist their mothers, and may be therefore be involved in household chores and caring for younger siblings to an extent which risks to turn into child labour. Girls in such situations tend to be also the first ones to be withdrawn from school.

Gender inequality interplays with the division of labour inside the household, as well as outside, determining patterns of children’s time allocation in both areas. Rural women’s constraints compromises therefore not only their own lives, but also future opportunities for today’s children, especially girls.
All these limitations take an even more acute form for rural young women, who, in additional to gender-based discrimination, often face age-related constraints such as turbulent school-to-work transition, lack of self-confidence and experience, distrust of banks, employers and cooperatives, legal barriers and even more difficult access to land and productive resources.
Frequent pregnancies (and early pregnancies) in addition to small children to care for are yet another obstacle to accessing training, gaining experience and fully engaging in productive work.
That is why increasing women’s participation in higher-value added activities and their access to finance and resources, is extremely important, but might not be enough.

A poorly designed initiative may inadvertently worsen the situation by increasing women’s work burden, not compensated by rapid higher income, and drawing more children in to work. Hence, that interventions oriented towards value chain development need to be designed based upon a solid gender and age analysis, which assesses gender and age-based constraints and go beyond the household as a homogenous unit – therefore taking into account intra-household labour division, power relations, as well as specific risks and vulnerabilities.

In general,

• Development interventions should pay a greater attention to social protection and social security, such as safety nets to absorb shocks, school feeding to incentivize children’s (and girls’ in particular) school attendance, maternity protection etc. Women’s and mixed cooperatives and producers’ organizations should also encourage creating care facilities at work place, or subsidized kinder gardens.
• Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) should promote women’s access to labour-saving technologies.
• ENABLE Youth and other similar programmes should ensure that such gender-sensitive measures are in place to allow young rural women to fully benefit from the programme.
• Social norms lying at the basis of unequal rural labour distribution between adult men and women need to be taken into account and challenged in order to truly release women’s potential as agents of rural development.

The challenges to women engagement in priority value chains, agribusiness and industries including value addition and commercialization of agricultural products include the below:

Gender disparities in agri-business

• Women are doers of work; while men are owners of business and of the income generated.
• Women lack access to factors of production in agribusiness compared to men
• Men inherit resources from parents; but women are disadvantaged in land and assets inheritance or business ending up in small temporary business.

Challenges women face in Agri- business

1. Low investment irrigation and water supply may limit production as they rely on rainfall.
2. Lack of sufficient innovations to women relying on tradition labour-based production and value addition techniques men use machinery.
3. Women concentrate on narrow range of agricultural commodities mainly staple crops for house hold production for men focus more on market or export.
4. Women lack storage store, coolers houses and processing plants required for efficient operation of value chains.
5. Lack of knowledge/ Information technology by the women as compared to men
6. Women have limited resource for processing branding quality certification and  accreditation of agriculture products resulting in low returns and income
7. Value chains for commodities are long and un-transparent with many players making them inefficient and do not favor women.
8. Women lack information especially on digitalization of agricultural production and marketing of produce and products.
9. Low value addition as there is little on-farm and off-farm processing of agricultural produce leading to low market prices. Heavy loss on  horticultural produce at farm level

(ii) Involvement of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) including AfDB and other development partners supported women engaged in Agribusiness sub-sector
Development Finance Institutions involvement in support of women mainly in capacity building.
In Kenya for example we have Women Enterprise Fund (WEF) where through the government they give loans and grants to members for starting and operating business especially in agriculture. Youth Fund also offers loans to young farmers and entrepreneurs. They also support their members with advisory services in order to grow their business. This has promoted gender equality and has empowered women meeting the goal in the millennium development goals.
The support is given to women where they loan repayment rates are friendly to support their businesss. 

(iii)Bank address the challenges of women in Agribusiness
Development Finance Institutions involvement in support of women in Kenya includes: Kenya Women Finance Trust is among the largest support women in Africa offering biashara loans, mwamba loans and mwangaza loans whereby girls and women are able obtain funds for their business with affordable interest rates and entrepreneurs are able to advance loans in order to acquire machinery and agricultural assets such as land.
The goal of this bank is to eradicate poverty and empower families through women. This in turn will reduce rural-urban migration in search of employment among women and youth.

(iv) Empowering Novel Agri- business-Led Employment) Youth initiatives, be used to support gender equality in Agri-business.
Empowering community (women and Youth) through crops value chains like value addition, certification and compliance to Global Good Agricultural Practices(GAP) or Kenya GAP . Small holder farmers will benefit from Horticultural crops trials, demonstrations and commercialization of chilies, tomatoes, passion fruit, mangoes, paw paws, butternuts, pulses and Asian vegetables. This activity has a high potential for a strong positive impact on women and youth who are more than 50% of the targeted beneficiaries for income generation and poverty reduction through agribusiness.

(V) Success stories on empowering women in agribusiness, industries and markets that can be upscale by AfDB.
Empowering women in agribusiness along postharvest value chain of agriculture products may improve income at farm level.
Women in Eastern/Meru are fully involved in marketing of banana crop which has improved the livelihood of many.
Banana marketing in the country can be improved by proper postharvest handling, sorting, ripening, packaging and transportation to the consumer.
Capacity building of Women and youth on importance of improved postharvest technologies of bananas would improve the market price and returns per given area and community at large. Along postharvest is also value addition of bananas to various products like banana flour, banana crisps, banana drink and other backed products.

The African Development Bank may upscale these areas by providing of grants/loans, machinery, tools and equipments for value addition to support women. This support should go in line with high value crops grown depending on enterprise choice.

How can the ENABLE Youth Initiative be used to empower young women in agribusiness?

• Gender inequality in the labor market is evident in most developing countries with observed gender gaps in participation and employment outcomes. Developing countries are faced with the task of continuing to generate employment growth, reducing vulnerable employment, and improving decent work. This requires broad macroeconomic strategy responses to expand employment opportunities, to improve decent work and social protection targeting all gender categories. Active labor market programs including education and vocational training should reach both women and men and that women are supported in non-traditional areas of training. Good practice calls for comprehensive social service provision, including water, sanitation, transport, and various forms of child care, would reduce women’s unpaid domestic and care burden, making it feasible for women to participate in paid work. Thus, equal access to assets such as land, education, and extension services and credit, which can raise productivity, are key components of an inclusive growth strategy. 
• The main factors facilitating and hindering entry of young women in self-employment include capital, education, skills and markets. Related to these are cultural and social norms around domestic work and care burdens. In addition, women have limited access to resources, including education, training, government services, credit and financial services.
• The initiative should help organisations to deal with issues of compliance to labour laws which is lacking among private sector employers of young women in aspects of minimum wage, working hours, holidays, occupational safety and health workers compensations.
• The promising sectors which can employ young women are agricultural commodity trading and value addition; industry and manufacturing and services sectors. However, young women can be engaged in various value chains if properly mentored. These value chains include production, buying and selling of horticultural crops; brick laying; welding; carpentry; motor vehicle and motor cycle maintenance; solar electricity installation; production and selling of fruit seedlings; baking; running saloons; tailoring; restaurants; selling and repairing electronic gadgets such as cellphones.
• Owing to low education and skills levels among the young women, the initiative need to include financial numeracy and literacy training, leadership skills, business management skills and access to microcredit and market information in its programme.
• The initiative should support young women in upper primary and secondary schools through internships, career talks and mentor ship with existing micro and small enterprises or youth-led businesses.

Regards
Chikondi Manyungwa Pasani

I am a female founder of an innovative, dynamic tech enabled agribusiness that has been a showcase of African Success on the global platform. Having our company recently featured on CNN African startup and Yale University's African Business Practicum

Ojay Greene the company I founded and offer leadership works with smallholder farmers using a unique technology platform that I developed to improve their financial inclusion (access to a continuous income stream and enhancing their saving ability making them eligible to access loans). We have achieved some remarkable strides working with women smallholder farmers - with some of the success stories highlighted below: 

• Yvette Ondachi - Helping Female smallholder farmers play a pivotal role in the food value chain
• Ojay Greene- Inspiring Female innovators and enabling girls access an Education 
• Ojay Greene - Connecting farmers to markets
• Yvette Ondachi's story - She inspires Her

Despite these milestones, our company is highly underfinanced and is barely realizing the full potential of life transformational impact among smallholder farmers. This in turn impacts negatively on female smallholder farmers as well as the female dropout rate from school due to early marriages.
Ojay Greene  should be considered for scale up by AfDB because it will transform the livelihoods and financial status of women.
Many thanks

Yvette Ondachi
Founder & Managing Director
Ojay Greene
Cell: +254 711 452 819

Recently featured on CNN African Start-Up 
Use the following link to watch the story on CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/08/03/african-start-up-ojay-greene-spc.cnn

La nature démontre que les femmes possèdent l'art de la transformation

alimentaire. Leur implication dans l'agro alimentaire serait plus

bénéfique. La femme est battante, mère donc avec un coeur plus ouvert

et affectif. Son revenu issu de ce secteur servirait au mieux au

ménage.

Aussi le secteur agro alimentaire est d'avenir en Afrique (en plein essort).

Oui, les jeunes femmes devraient s'interesser à l'argulture.

Le panier de là ménagère en Guinée est dans la main de la femme.La plupart d'ex femmes à la charge familiale,  car elle exerce les travaux champêtres pour subvenir aux besoins de la famille. Et les femmes représentent les 80% de la population guinéenne. 

Les jeunes femmes sont intéressées dans l'agro-alimentaire pour la transformation des produits agricoles non lignés.

Bien Cordialement

Ojay Greene has observed that female farmers have immense potential to play a pivotal role in the food value chain in Kenya and Africa. This is because they tend to be more organized in regards to conforming to our model which requires smallholder farmers to work together as a farming community in groups.

Most of the female farmers we’ve worked with are beginning to realize the benefits of working together. Together they have collective bargaining power that spurs them on to generate enough income to educate their children. This said, women need more access to financing – stronger links to market and continuous knowledge transfer to make them more productive.

As a female entrepreneur, my biggest barrier being the barrier to financing – I faced broken promises from potential financiers and investors, as well as delayed payments from clients. I observed that an underfinanced company fails to realize its potential and the growth is hampered. 

Yvette Ondachi

How can the AfDB promote public-private partnerships that will mostly benefit women in agribusiness, agro-processing and agro-industries?

Assisting national agriculture investment plans to be gender sensitive and be subject to gender sensitive budgeting

This should include the provision of assistance (finance and technical) to the national women machinery to collect and create an evidence base and synthesis of lessons and experiences to date; fund activities of sharing lessons learned and data from monitoring and evaluation with the technical and financial partners and the finance institutions at both national and regional level (many of the value chains are regional). At national level we should be able to visualize the overall impact of inclusive business models that  have a sufficiently big impact on business profitability and branding and to include and fund these approaches in national extension’s core business operations and invest in the necessary partnerships but as well document the gaps between male and female participants, girls and boys and create visuals that are SMART

We should be able to institutionalise a gender analysis of all public private partnerships and sector innovations (including the value chain platforms management and activities) that are concluded and make sure that there are measures taken so the PPP’s contribute to reducing gender gaps and set up an effective learning process across value chains and public-private partnerships with the collaboration of research institutions (and statisticians) to produce reliable evidence based monitoring and lessons learning documents

Overall : set up a task force and develop a monitoring/evaluation and learning agenda for inclusive agribusiness and  youth employement and discuss institutional and funding modalities for implementation at the level of regional value chains and at the national level.

How could the ENABLE (Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment) Youth initiative, be used to empower young women in agribusiness?

Contribute to scale up the best practices that were documented from the collection, analysis and synthesis of best practices and fund as well work at the macro level in terms of actions to create employment and equitable remunerations, social actions where needed to protect the most vulnerable groups and girls and boys from poor households to have access to quality training and education opportunities to get out of poverty.

With the collaboration of value chain (national and regional) platforms assist in adjustment of policy settings in relation, for example, to taxation, tariffs and trade, public sector investment (NAIP) in agri- cultural research and extension, minimum salaries and social norms should create conditions for reduction of gender and poverty gaps.

Support national mechanisms for access to rural finance adapted to start ups and increasing capital of existing businesses with specific ratios for female and youth (girls) services

As the whole idea was to gather practical views on gender integration in the AfDB African Agricultural Transformation Agenda, hopefully the sum of individual inputs, less than two hundred gender’ conscious registered participants came in together to provide in this platform, would give the most set of concerns at stake for our three hundred millions of women+ in agriculture… Think about the ratio, to understand that we need even more actors, players that what this fora has brought so far!

As most said, albeit in various ways, to stress the need for a collaborative team on this issue, I can’t agree more with Katrien above for setting up a task force and develop a monitoring/evaluation agenda for inclusive agribusiness and youth employment, so as to set the tone for institutional donor financing strategies for implementation at regional and national value chain levels. The ball is truly in the court of the AfDB for leadership takeover towards an endogenous sustainability model.

We have many opportunities to increase visibility across women’ impact in agribusiness… the understanding is pervasive now more than 30 years ago, and we should start devising inclusive modalities on that note… As I stressed earlier, WAAPP-PPAAO projects in the west Africa region has so far a good starting point for AfDB centered projects ready to inherit and further capitalize on those existing investment frameworks…

The United States and Togo will co-host the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum in Lomé, Togo from Aug. 8-10. As the Forum is set to bring together senior government officials from the United States and 38 Sub-Saharan African countries to discuss ways to boost economic cooperation and trade between the U.S. and Africa, AfDB should be geared to joining the event, secure a booth with a few sponsored women groups to bring their quality products for display while showcasing visibility over this tentative agenda of theirs in scaling up women in African agricultural transformation and follow up on that landmark yearly event!

With similar concerns, I plan on showcasing such achievements of the Malian women entrepreneurs’ network around food products packaging and labeling for better country of origin overhauling... Besides agricultural equipment promotion from artisans in the region.

La BAD peut promouvoir les partenariats publics privés à travers les plans d'investissements des pays africains lors de la conception.

les Experts de la BAD doivent être en contact avec les Ministères du Plan, les Ministères de l'Agriculture, les Ministères des Finances et les Ministères dû Genres de nos pays pour s'assurer que les plans nationaux donnent priorités aux besoins et   des   femmes dans l'agro-alimentaire.

Ces  ministères doivent former un comité qui doit être en contact avec la banque pour le suivi de l'élaboration des plans nationaux. Ce comité ministériel pourra rendre compte du suivi en conseil des Ministres afin que la volonté politique et gouvernementale accompagnela Bamque pour s'assurer de la préoccupation de cette dernière .

La Banque pourra promouvoir les partenariats publics privés à l'avantage des femmes en s'assurant que les plans nationaux d'investissement ont pris en comptes ces partenariats comme nous l'avions indiqué plus haut. Cela permettra de : 

1. favoriserl le développement de l'agroalimentaire et la sécurité alimentaire ;
2. accroitre la croissance du secteur agroalimentaire ainsi que le développement des chaînes de valeurs.

L'initiative ENABLE ayant pour objectif de renforcer la capacité des jeunes diplômés à créer des entreprises le long de la chaîne de valeur agricole par le biais des incubateurs de projet agrobusiness est une initiative qui doit prendre en compte les jeunes filles par une discrimination positive pouvant les amener à s'y inscrire massivement. 

Au Benin, le Projet Emploi Jeunes (PEJ) reserve aux jeunes filles intéressées par les métiers des hommes comme maçon, plombiers etc une discrimination positive.

Marie-Laurence Sranon

Point Focal National  Genre Benin (IFDC/C4CP)

Ancien Ministre

Consultante Experte

Un petit rappel :

" L’approche genre promeut l’égalité des droits, ainsi qu’un partage équitable des ressources et responsabilités entre les femmes et les hommes. Elle produit une analyse comparée de la situation des femmes et des hommes tant d’un point de vue économique que social, culturel et politique.

L’approche « Genre et Développement » vise à rendre visible les inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes afin que les préoccupations de ces dernières soient prises en compte directement dans les politiques, programmes et projets de développement. En s’adressant aux personnes comme aux institutions, elle cherche à sensibiliser et changer les mentalités pour imaginer des modes de relations plus démocratiques, tant dans la vie quotidienne que dans la vie économique, sociale et politique."

CONTRIBUTION :

Dans notre vécu quotidien, nous voyons que beaucoup de restrictions sont faites aux femmes dans différents secteurs de la vie publique, ainsi que les insuffisances liées à l’intégration de celles - ci dans la gestion des affaires communautaires.

Mais il faut souligner que le fondement même de toutes ces restrictions n'est qu'une suite logique d'une série de discrimination dont sont victimes les femmes à différents niveaux : familial, communautaire, éducation, santé, politique, économique et social. Concrètement, cela se traduit ainsi :

• Niveau familial :

 La famille est la cellule de base de la société. C’est à ce niveau que sont véhiculées les valeurs sociales qui se transmettent entre les générations. La différenciation inégale des statuts et rôles masculins et féminins apparaît au sein de la famille selon les cultures : à l’homme, il est conféré les statuts traditionnels de « chef de famille » par opposition à « mère et/ou épouse » pour la femme. Les relations de pouvoir et d’autorité de l’homme vis-à-vis de la femme connaissent ainsi leur premier mode d’application. Ce sentiment d’infériorité est très vite intériorisé dès le bas âge par la fille (future mère). Le phénomène est fortement ressenti et influence la division du travail et des responsabilités au sein des ménages.

 En fonction de ces considération sociales les femmes en milieu rural apparaissent très souvent soumises à une situation qui ne s’apparente qu’ à une obligation morale sans pour autant s’interroger sur les raisons fondées de celles – ci . Une situation qu’on peut assimiler à un fait social accepté et vécu par tous et qui ne repose sur aucun fondement juridique ou scientifique si ce n’est sur des considérations culturelles et idéologiques.

• Niveau communautaire :

La différenciation notée au sein de la famille concernant les rôles sociaux des hommes et des femmes dictent les types de relations à l’échelle de la communauté. Les hommes assument des rôles d’autorité et les femmes ceux de subordination. En effet ce qu’on peut considérer comme un « effet paradigme » a son influence sur la prise des décisions au plan social. Une situation souvent au profit des hommes démontrée par l’accès facile aux facteurs et moyens de productions. Les femmes sont reléguées au second plan et leurs rôles consistent à assurer la gestion des travaux quotidiens dans les ménages tout en assumant la fonction de régulatrice sociale.

 En dépit de ces considérations limitées chez les femmes on peut pourtant apprécier positivement leur importante contribution à l’économie locale et qui n’est pas entièrement prise en compte en vertu de leur position sociale. Un phénomène qui est à l’origine des disparités constatées de part et d’autre et qui n’est pas sans causer des effets sur les niveaux d’ouverture des femmes sur l’accès à la formation et l’adaptation aux innovations technologiques et par conséquent à l’acquisition de nouvelles connaissances.

• Niveau éducation :

L’analphabétisme est très ressenti chez les populations. Il est beaucoup plus constaté chez les femmes en raison des nombreuses restrictions qui pèsent sur ces dernières. Leur faible niveau de développement justifie parfois cette situation. Elles sont réduites au rang de ménagères et ne s’activent qu’aux travaux domestiques selon des considérations sociales. Le fort taux d’analphabétisme constitue une des causes majeures de la situation de vulnérabilité dans laquelle évoluent ces dernières en milieu rural. A cet effet elles manquent naturellement de maîtriser leur droit et devoir vis – à - vis de la société et sont souvent confrontées à la contrainte de revendication de leur légitimité sur le plan juridique.

• Niveau santé :

L’accès aux soins de santé constitue un véritable problème pour les femmes en milieu rural en raison de leurs faibles ressources mais surtout de l’enclavement des villages. Du coup la vulnérabilité des femmes devient de plus en plus accentuée. Parmi d’autres facteurs qui affectent aussi la santé des femmes nous avons, la fécondité élevée liée au manque d’informations sur les mesures sécuritaires, les pesanteurs socioculturelles (par exemples : la conception négative sur l’utilisation des produits contraceptifs pour espacement des naissances etc.). Tout ceci contribue au développement de la précarité des conditions de vie aggravée par la pauvreté, la faiblesse des revenus, les mauvaises conditions d’hygiène et les difficultés d’accès à l’eau potable.

• Niveaux économique, politique et social :

Le statut, par rapport aux activités économiques, semble mettre en relief un effet discriminatoire selon le genre, du fait de la non prise en compte ou de la non valorisation de la contribution des femmes dans les revenus du ménage. Les activités fournies par les femmes à ce niveau, ne sont pas prises en compte. En milieu rural, les femmes s’activent pour la majeure partie dans l’agriculture, l’élevage, mais également la transformation et la commercialisation des produits agricoles. Elles sont donc à la fois dans les activités domestiques et économiques. Cependant elles exercent ces activités sur des terres familiales en raison de leur accès limité à la terre et à la propriété foncière, mais aussi aux facteurs de productions. Pourtant « L’accès à la terre est garanti de manière équitable à tous les citoyens par la Constitution et la loi sur le domaine national ». Cette discrimination ne se limite pas seulement à l’accès, mais aussi au contrôle de toutes ces ressources. La femme rurale se retrouve alors dans une situation de dépendance exclusive des hommes et sans pouvoir décisionnel. Ce qui les expose de plus en plus à une situation de vulnérabilité. Les contraintes politiques quand à elles sont liées à la faible représentativité des femmes au niveau des instances de décision, que ce soit au niveau des villages ou au niveau de la collectivité locale. Ce qui entraîne une faible prise en compte de leurs préoccupations.

RECOMMANDATIONS:

• Intégrer l’approche genre dans la conception et la budgétisation des interventions des collectivités locales dans les secteurs lefs de l’éducation mais surtout l’économie.
• Renforcer l’accès et la représentativité des femmes dans les instances de décision de ces collectivités: non pas en quantité (nombre) mais en qualité (assurer à ces femmes une formation efficace pour relever les défis).
• Adopter des mesures correctives pour un meilleur accès des femmes aux ressources productives telles que la terre, les intrants, les équipements etc.
• Promouvoir l’alphabétisation avec des contenus adaptés et des méthodes adéquates et efficaces.
• Élaborer des programmes, projets de développement pour les femmes dans les domaines de l’agriculture, l’élevage et le commerce.
• Tenir des fora d’information et sensibilisation pour les femmes sur des thématiques appropriées (leadership – genre, genre et développement, plaidoyer etc.) pour susciter entrepreneuriat local chez ces dernières.

How can the AfDB promote public-private partnerships (PPP) that will mostly benefit women in agribusiness, agro-processing and agro-industries?

• By providing overall operational framework guiding the establishment of such PPP in Africa
• The PPP should also spell out the institutional framework and funding mechanisms and other key issues that can efficiently help promote women in agribusiness
• By de-risking private sector involvement through for example serving as guarantors for private sector interested in such arrangements through the provision of lines of credit to import agricultural technologies and labour-saving technologies.
• By integrating gender issues and concerns in operational guidelines guiding the PPP so that women and male farmers can participate and benefit equally in such arrangements
• Since women agri-entreprenuer have been biased against in agriculture,  a sort of affirmative action should be integrated into such PPP arrangements to prioritise women in agribusiness

How could the ENABLE (Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment) Youth Initiative, be used to empower young women in agribusiness?

• Undertaking the needs assessment of young women in agribusiness;
• Undertaking a comprehensive profiling and establishment of an up-to-date database of young women in agribusiness. Without accurate data, planning becomes difficult;
• Deploy the use of innovations such as ICTs to pro efficiently manage the agricultural value chain so as to efficiently connect young women farmers to key stakeholders in the value chain such as the agro-dealers, input suppliers, market actors, financial institutions among others;
• Providing incentives for young women to participate in agriculture as business. These could involve subsidized seedlings and inputs, access to credit at single-digit interest rate, facilitating access to commercial equipment such as tractors, plough etc. at subsidized rates;
• Introducing novel programmes such as CARE US Pathways Program’s Farmer Field and Business Schools FFBS for young women groups to educate them on issues of turning agriculture into business. This could include areas such as record keeping, managing portfolio investments, accessing markets (both locally and for exports), value creation and addition among others
• It should also aim at building the capacity of women in agribusiness to better understand how markets function and position them to take advantage of existing and emerging market opportunities for their products.  
• Tackling issues that limit young women access to productive resources such as gender norms that limit access to land. This can be done through capacity building and designing gender transformative intervention programs
• Organising young women into cooperatives so that they can access credits and inputs for agricultural production
• By developing rural infrastructure such as roads

A number of African countries are reviewing their National Agricultural Investment Plans. How to ensure that such plans prioritize women’s needs and priorities in agribusiness?

• Undertake a comprehensive needs assessment of women in agribusiness;
• Engendering women’s needs in agricultural plans and programmes;
• Provide frameworks for incentivizing young women to participate in agriculture as business. These could involve subsidized seedlings and inputs, access to credit at single-digit interest rate, facilitating access to commercial equipment such as tractors, plough etc. at subsidized rates;
• Eliminate cultural and gender norms that restrict women’s access to productive resources especially land;
• Facilitate investment advisory support for potential women entrepreneurs
• Expand capacity building for women and youth for entrepreneurship, including technical training and access to financial service
• Strong and efficient monitoring and evaluating system should be integrated to assess progress and create transparency in the process

Which success stories on empowering women in agribusiness, industries and markets could be scaled up by the AfDB?

a.   CARE Pathways (Women in Agriculture) Program

CARE Pathways programme aims at enhancing the livelihood of poor smallholder women farmers through improved productivity and profitability by empowering women to further engage in equitable agriculture systems. It is implemented in seven countries which include Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Ethiopia, India and Tanzania.  The programme is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

b.   Cassava: Adding Value for Africa (CAVA)

Project is aimed at developing value chains for High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) in five African countries: Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and Malawi. The program is directed at improving the livelihoods and incomes of at least 90,000 smallholder households as direct beneficiaries including women and disadvantaged groups by promoting the use of HQCF as a versatile raw material for which diverse markets exist.

c.   Cassava Growth Markets Program

Cassava Growth Markets (CassavaGMarkets) is a project led by the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich in collaboration with 6 international partners and associates, that aims to improve the livelihoods of smallholder cassava farmers through better access to growth markets. The project is implemented in 6 countries namely Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and India.

The main objective of Cassava GMarkets is to empower smallholder farmers in the access to markets and enable them to generate cash income from selling produce at markets leading to greater stability of income and increased agricultural production and diversity. One specific example is maximise gender and livelihood impacts of value chain development.

The questions are: 

What are the challenges of women engagement in agricultural production, processing and distribution value chains?
How have Development financial institutions supported women’s engagement in these sub sectors?
How should the banks address these challenges?
How could the ENABLE a youth empowerment initiative be used to support gender equity in these sub sectors?

Here is my take:
Women produce more than 50 percent of the food worldwide. Food crop production is an important subsector of the agricultural sector which provides foods and materials for household and agro-industries respectively.  Existing literature lend credence to the fact that women dominated food production and also perform overwhelming majority of the work of food processing in most developing countries (FAO 2005, Hills, 1996). Food processing contributes to food security through reduction in losses, diversity of diets and supplying of important vitamins and minerals. Food security as endorsed by the International Conference on Nutrition in 1992 is a state of affairs where all members of a household at all times have access to safe and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. This implies that women perform virtually all the tasks required for household food security and ensuring good nutrition.

Challenges
Inspite of the significant contributions of African women to agriculture , they still face a lot of discriminations inform of unequal access to most productive resources such as; Land, education and training, health, agricultural credit, extension contact, food and housing and often their legal standing is inferior and are unable to participate in politics and policy making. Women in most Sub – Sahara Africa have no direct access to lands traditionally like others in patrilineal societies where access to land is through their male relatives. Access to land is crucial in agricultural production as this is tied to access to credit and other means of production. Women often have difficulty obtaining credit because they rarely hold title to land or to capital assets often required as collateral. Africa women make up 80 percent of food producers but receive only 2-10 percent extension contact (FAO 2005). This is due to the fact that majority of the extension agents are men resulting into bias in the dissemination of information about new developments in agriculture in favour of men.

Jadesola (2004) noted that in some of the villages in old Bendel State where a hydraulic palm oil press was introduced, 72 percent of the villages used it the first year, this dropped to 24 percent in the following year because  in the first place, the machine was not designed for women to be handle  and because the daily time schedule did not coincide with their own time. As such, women did not benefit from the increase in the processed oil.  This demonstrates how lack of education and training have made it difficult for women to be integrated in development programmes. In a similar study  (Awoyemi and Adekanye 2005), it was observed that other than in the case of such simple farm implements as hoes and cutlasses, agricultural capital, particularly in terms of modern machinery, does not appear to reach women much in developing countries. The situation is the same for such complementary factor inputs as improved technology agro-chemicals such as fertilizers and herbicides, improved farm management practices and agricultural credit.  All these challenges have constrained the ability of women in agricultural production. 

Women in agribusiness (all processes involved in getting farm produce to consumers in the required form, time and place) are seriously constrained by the low level of infrastructure in the rural areas. Infrastructure includes physical roads and railways, education and health facilities, social services such as water, electricity and communication system. In most parts of the developing countries, physical and marketing information are poorly developed, storage facilities are rudimentary, supply of potable water is not adequate. Electricity supply is often epileptic, communication system is still poor although recent expansion of Global system of mobile communication (GSM) infrastructure and internet service has improved communication but it is too expensive for rural people

The contributions of Development Finance Institutions in support of women in production, processing and trading.
Government sources provide credit at minimum interest to rural women to promote women engagement in small enterprises and facilitate socio-economic change and development while the NGOs fulfils the credits needs of poor women engaged in the unorganized sector not being adequately addressed by the formal financial institutions. The impact of the financial institutions on these women has made them financially strong and are quite successful in creativity and innovation based working process.

Difficulties faced in accessing finance

• The greatest deterrent to women entrepreneurs is that they are women. Financial institutions are sceptical about entrepreneurship ability of women. They consider them  as higher risk than men.
• They lack tangible security – land
• External factors working against women to financial support include; internal discrimination, inaccessibility of information, transportation opportunity and infrastructure
• Internal factors such as low risk aversion by women, lack of self-confidence and lack of vision
• Banks also ask for a lot of paperwork which most women cannot handle

How can the Banks Address the Challenges?

• Financial Institutions  should provide more working for both small and large scale agricultural women ventures
• Conduct repeated gender-sensitization programmes for policy makers and financiers on how to treat women with dignity and respects as persons in their own right.
• Collect more gender disaggregated data on rural and agricultural activities to inform stakeholders the appropriateness of redesigning credit instrument or financial services.
• Building on present potentials: Women entrepreneurs possess skills and techniques that are an asset to the development process. They do form groups and associations in their endeavours, where such groups already exist, capacity building of such groups will be more successful than forming a new one of members with less commitment.

1- The ENABLE program should ‘enable’ equality, empowerment and employment, entrepreneurship and (social) education (particularly looking through the lens of women living in rural, peri-urban areas)

2- Equality: afford equal opportunities for women. Women (young and old) are traditionally regarded as the care givers in the home. They may not be regarded as the ‘official’ bread winners. They provide for food on the table and strive to ensure education for their children including taking care of health needs. And yet, cultural norms and policies are skewed against their equal access to education, assets, exposure and opportunities to develop their small cottage industry or market stall into a viable value chain market.

•  ENABLE should ensure that young women across the divide- urban, peri-urban and remotely rural areas – are considered. Quota systems need to reflect the national demographic and favour women
•  Relatedly, in the business space, women should be supported to participate in determining their own support requirements in policy dialogue, promote job equality and inclusion in skills enhancement programmes

3- Empowerment: Even when they are afforded opportunities, the quota system continues to exclude some. Empowerment should provide all-rounded capacity building support to help build women as champions of their own development.

•   This requires tailored approaches that build skills and capacities within the local context are provided, to help integrate women into decent employment and enterprise development

4- Entrepreneurship:

• Creating an enabling environment for enhancing access to labour saving and value addition technologies is essential for women in entrepreneurship. Labour saving technologies (LST) are critical for women due to the fact that they are the ones involved in multitasked roles in agricultural activities and at family level. High food losses from farms to the plate necessitate a great need for development of value addition & food processing technologies. Skills trainings are also an integral part of this.
• Women should be supported to gain access to finance, which include easing conditions for granting loans; as well as easing barriers to entry into traditionally male-dominated sectors, into services such as transportation etc. Women are excluded due to cultural practise (e.g. on land ownership) and some unfavourable policies, thereby ‘boxing’ them into traditional spaces which are already saturated and excluding them from access to credit/finances. Women run businesses are known to have better customer service delivery.

5- Employment: Whilst women are provided opportunities for employment, efforts are often token with women continuing to be excluded from opportunities for promotion.

• Monitoring and evaluation of the ENABLE could track how those women that are employed are given opportunities for growth in their place of employment and therefore have equal opportunity for promotion as their male counterparts.

6- Education:

• Low levels of education and lack of access to information and training limit women and girls to exercise their rights and exploit their capabilities. Think of a girl child who gets impregnated and stops schooling, for example. It seems that is the end of the road for such girls if nobody comes their way to help. Such cases are very common in Africa.
  • ENABLE can help pick up such girls and give them access to further education or skills trainings that will help to build them up economically. They can start some businesses and when the businesses grow, they can create employment for others.
• Overall- it is important to recognise that fast tracking women’s empowerment requires social education of communities to address deeply held social perspectives about what women can and cannot do.   
  • ENABLE could accompany its delivery with a strong communication strategy that addresses the above to ensure women benefit sustainably and communities are transformed.

It is clear that women have been excluded in main value chains.

They need their confidence to be or bolstered through value addition training.

They also need to be supported to access lucrative markets.

Shadreck Hungwe
Zimbabwe Farmers Union 
Zimbabwe

Même si ce plan national d'investissement existe , il n'est pas vulgarisé pour que les femmes soient informées et en bénéficient. 

 La plupart des femmes sont autonomes à travers les ONG, coopérative agroalimentaire, mais la transformation des produits fait défaut à beaucoup de localités  plus le manque d'appui financier.

Bien Cordialement.

Biliga

I agree that direct partnership with private sector by public entities may be a challenge because private sector require clear terms of financial engagements which may be difficult to achieve from the public sector. The public sector role is to regulate businesses and provide an enabling environment for the business to flourish.

A good starting point for initiating a win-win cooperation is by encouraging consultations between government and private sector in developing and inspection of implementable policies and regulations friendly to women entreprenuers. The entrepreneurs are likely to comply to such policies assuring food safety for consumers.

Secondly governments may promote value chains platforms or forums where potential private investors are identified to invest in businesses that directly promote production of cost effective and quality products from the women. The public sector can then work with these entrepreneurs by offering technical support to such businesses during establishment ensuring regulations are adhered to, good manufacturing practices attained (a win for public sector) and eventually branding of the outlets.
Branding builds consumer confidence in the business and a win for private sector. Where applicable, the public sector can link the sources of raw materials to the facility for enhanced quality.
An example is a slaughter house for broilers where the veterinary department can provide guidelines and supervise establishment of the facility. The veterinary department role also includes inspection of the birds and certification all of which ensure the production of hygienic products. The department can further link the broiler producers (majority are women) to the facility. The producers are trained by livestock production officers on good agricultural practices.
Such arrangements allow traceability of products ensuring products are of highest standards and likely to fetch premium prices.

In addition, there should be enhanced linkages between industry, academia, non-government organizations and public sector. For example public sector may invite actors to value chain platform, expose them to existing technologies available that may be expensive limiting use in the farms. Similarly, university students can be linked to women producers during internships so they study conditions at farm and develop products that will save time and increase production or processing efficiency for women entrepreneurs. If such ideas are incubated to maturity then there is the likelihood of developing innovations directly benefitting women. For example engineering students can propose fabricated, affordable equipment needed to ease operations at farm level.

At the industry level, industry should provide feedback to universities on the skill needs required for graduates to fit in the job market. Including women in National investment plans African governments should commit funds for agriculture investments in order to get engaged by other funding organizations promoting gender budgeting. Gender budgeting is then adopted where the organizations devise clear set targets within short term and in the long term within stipulated timelines. The gender activity should be captured as a target in performance contract of governments hence addressed as a core activity.

Closer trans disciplinary collaborations is much needed for African government to have proper agricultural investment plans. We may need mathematicians or economists to put figures to the agricultural transformation we envision. To accelerate commercialization of agriculture we need to make use of market research findings, synthesize reports in order to turn chain functions into market segments and establish investments needed by each segment.

There are particular chain functions that are popular with women and youth. For example, production of broilers in Nairobi is primarily undertaken by women while traders and processors in the value chain are youth. Proposing on investments that will modernize such businesses towards commercialization prioritizes them in investment planning. There is need to work out details of production thresholds required for commercialization, ways of achieving these levels and establishing input support needed in form of subsidies. After obtaining the facts and figures, messages should be sent to chain actors that lot more is needed to commercialize and create awareness in a manner to persuade them to change operations and especially adopt collective action for entrepreneurs operating at a small scale. Groups that progress, should be supported to access regional and global markets to inspire others to follow suit.

Success stories of women entrepreneurs
Some successes in broiler business in Nairobi county include ability of farmer groups to lower transport and transaction costs of feeds, access extension services from public and private sector.
Some groups conduct group meetings at the members’ project site there after address the host members project needs like management or marketing of birds.
Other groups have been able to access funds from government or mobilize their own resources. There is a group that innovatively raised funds by saving on project allowances. The group then invested the money in a milk processing equipment and penetrated value added milk market. The business is up running and stable because the contribution cultivated a sense of ownership among the members unlike groups granted inputs that lack commitment, run into management problems and majority of the project stall.
Successful small scale entrepreneurs like in peanut butter processing have been sponsored to regional exhibitions where they market their products at very good prices.
Such events were found to re-energize the women to expand businesses and do better.

Beatrice Tuei
Award fellow- 2009

It makes business sense to acknowledge the role that women play in agriculture as producers, processors and marketers. At production level, different value chains in different contexts will call for different interventions. The key thing is to conduct gender analyses to establish the value chain nodes in which men and women are able to participate in adequately and those ones where there are inhibitions. This helps identify whether the enablers/inhibitors are personal, cultural or institutional and whether there is need for a policy change to help address the differences in participation.

In processing, at the cottage level, there is need for skills development that takes into account the education status of the beneficiaries and introduction of friendly technologies that are easy to adopt in terms of cost, ease of use and efficiency in use. At industry level, labour, whether from men and women, skilled or unskilled should be fairly remunerated. Women should be encouraged to take up agricultural courses and training in learning institutions so that they are not just leaders in cottage industries but also in science labs and institutions where national/international agenda on agriculture is set. Set up of mentoring hubs where experienced persons offer opportunities to budding processors and scientists to learn how industry works is also important.

In marketing/trade, linkages to markets and access to market information for raw and value added agricultural products is important if women are to participate in agri-business. Another concern to consider is: how do women's enterprises remain theirs once they become successful? There have been instances where women's agricultural enterprises are taken over by men once they become economically viable therefore destabilizing women's financial status and ability to engage in agri-business. It is still unclear whether the answer lies in leveraging on collection action such as groups and cooperatives and further research is required to provide necessary evidence.

Un certain nombre de pays africains examinent leurs plans nationaux d'investissement en agriculture. Comment peut-on s’assurer que ces plans donnent la priorité aux besoins et aux priorités des femmes dans l'agro-alimentaire ?
Afin de s’assurer que les besoins et aspirations  des femmes  dans l’agroalimentaire ont été pris en compte  dans les Plans Nationaux d’Investissement en Agriculture (PNIA), il serait intéressant :

• Qu’une analyse  genre approfondie et récente du secteur agroalimentaire  soit conduite afin d’enrichir ces plans pour tous les pays pour lesquels les examens ont ressorti une insuffisance de la prise en compte du Genre.  Par exemple, pour le cas du Niger, l’ « Evaluation de la Dimension Genre dans le Secteur de l’Agriculture et du Développement Rural et Mise en Œuvre du  PNIA au Niger » conduite par Mr Abdoul Aziz Manzo en avril 2017,  a ressorti je cite : « ….. le PNIA n’a pas intégré le genre dans son élaboration et sa conception. Il a une tendance plutôt basée sur la gestion axée sur les résultats (GAR) sans incorporation de l’aspect genre ». P94. Aussi, il n’y avait de données récentes désagrégées par sexe au niveau des directions des statiques agricoles.
• De réactualiser les plans en cohérence avec les conclusions des examens dans les différents pays
• Qu’une approche participative de création et ou de renforcement  de capacité en genre pour, les concertations,   les diagnostiques, les planifications  et la mise en œuvre de ces plans soit soutenue pendant un certain temps afin de doter ces pays de ressources humaines compétentes à mêmes d’accompagner la mise à jour et l’opérationnalisation des  PNIA

• De mettre en œuvre déjà les recommandations issues de ces processus d’examen/évaluation des PNIA. Comme par exemple pour le Niger : a) l’application effective des lois et ou des  mesures de discrimination positive (lois instituant des quotas pour les femmes) en vigueur dans les pays ; cette application des lois peut être une condition que les bailleurs peuvent poser comme préalable à l’obtention d’une facilité quelle conque par les états.

Quelles réussites sur l'autonomisation des femmes dans l'agroalimentaire, l'agro-industrie et les marchés agricoles pourraient être amplifiées par la BAD ?
Pour les femmes rurales, les expériences de réussite qui pourraient être amplifiée que j’ai connu sont :

• La jeune expérience du programme conjoint RWEE (Rural Women Economique Empowerment) : la vulgarisation  des innovations /promotion des nouvelles technologies d’allègement des tâches, de génération des revenus, de transformation des produits agro sylvo pastoraux : plateformes multifonctionnelles, batteuse, séchoirs, kit d’extraction d’huile d’arachide, fours etc…. etc…. permettra aussi aux de facilitation de l’écoulement des produits de transformation des femmes à travers l’utilisation des vouchers pour approvisionner les cantines scolaires et le renforcement des capacités des femmes et des hommes sur l’hygiène corporelle et environnementale.
• L’expérience a montré aussi dans notre contexte, que pour la transformation et la commercialisation, les entreprises collectives peuvent donner des bons résultats ; mais les meilleurs résultats sont aux niveaux des initiatives individuelles.
•  L’expérience du centre Songhaï au Benin
• L’expérience en cours au Niger du Fonds d’Investissement pour la Sécurité Alimentaire et Nutritionnelle (le FISAN) : le Haut-Commissariat à l’Initiative 3N(Les Nigériens Nourrissent les Nigériens) et ses partenaires  se sont engagés dans un processus de réforme du financement agricole afin de juguler l’offre insuffisante et inappropriée de services financiers.

Au nombre des defis pour l'engagement des femmes dans les chaînes de valeur prioritaire, l'agroalimentaire et agro-industrie...
Les femmes sont courageuses et battantes et je pense qu’en sus des défis identifiés par mes prédécesseurs sur ce forum, le défi de l’accès durable et rentable des femmes travaillant dans l’agro-alimentaire au marché des produits transformés mérite d’être souligné.

 Pour relever ce defis, l’amélioration continue de la  qualité et de la compétitivité des produits mérite d’être mieux prise en charge. Très souvent les actions d’accompagnement des femmes, ne mettent pas un accent suffisant à mon sens sur cet aspect qui pourtant est déterminant pour une réelle rentabilité et durabilité de l’activité de transformation menée par les femmes. Relever ce défi passera en sus du renforcement de capacité et de l’accès aux technologies/a l’information, par des études de marché afin d’identifier les besoin des consommateurs et les mettre en adéquation avec les produits proposés. En résumé, les produits proposés par les femmes devront répondre au mieux aux attentes des consommateurs et être en mesure de concurrencer ceux importés.

Comment la BAD pourrait-elle aider à relever ces défis ?
La mise à l’échelle et la valorisation des résultats des initiatives genres sensibles tels que ceux obtenus par le les projets C4CP et le PPAAO qui ont également l’avantage d’être régionaux constitue à mon sens le meilleur créneau à exploiter par la BAD. Cette intervention pourrait concerner un certain nombre de filières porteuses existantes en vue d'un accompagnement complet ( sur toute la chaine de valeur), et s’accroître avec le temps.

En sus, un accompagnement des activités de transformation agro-alimentaires des femmes sur toute la chaine de valeur tenant compte de la demande/du marché afin d’obtenir des produits transformés très compétitifs sera d’un apport majeur dans la levée des contraintes auxquels les femmes intervenant dans l’agro-alimentaire/agro-industrie font face.

Among the biggest challenge facing the crop sector in sub-Saharan countries are  high cost of pest and soil borne disease management, that not only increase cost of production but also yield decline among smallholder farms. The rampant use of pesticide has raised a major concern as the cause of deteriorating human health and entire ecosystems.  

Brassica crops used in crop rotations and as green manures have been associated with reductions in soil-borne pests and pathogens. These reductions have been attributed to the production of volatile sulfur compounds through a process known as bio-fumigation, and to changes in soil microbial community structure.  In past research, in vitro assays, volatiles released from the chopped leaf material of Brassica crops and barley with Indian mustard inhibited (80–100%) growth of a variety of soil-borne pathogens of potato, including Rhizoctonia solani, Phytophthora erythroseptica, Pythium ultimum, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, and Fusarium sambucinam.

This is regarded as the best option for resource poor in not only controlling soil borne disease and pests, but also offers the best opportunities as crop cover since is beneficial in crop rotations, extraction of edible oils, composting  green manure and nutrient rich fresh vegetables for improved livelihood among smallholder farms which are mainly controlled by women and contributes to 75% of food production in Kenya.   

How can the AfDB promote public-private partnerships that will mostly benefit women in agribusiness, agro-processing and agro-industries?    Women manually exert a lot of metabolic energy processing food crops for sale or family consumption.  The use of crude processing equipment like the use of grinding stones and pounding of maize, millet or grating cassava, the use of hot smoky fires affect their bodies and health and that of their children.  Most of the products are lost during processing as a result of poor handling, spoilage of fresh crops, mostly vegetables and production costs grow high.

The AFDB can partner with appropriate technology and improved energy stoves companies to provide the needed capital or guarantees to support projects and initiatives that address these gaps.  Clean energy, grating and dehusking machinery are locally available to relief women of gruelling exertion of energy for food process.

How could the ENABLE (Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment) Youth initiative, be used to empower young women in agribusiness?   
Intentionally providing Seed money, capacity building and educational and business skills initiatives can enable young women lead their own innovative projects for economic empowerment.  Women are behind in education and many sectors of life due to cultural and traditional barriers that prevent them from acquiring and exploiting existing opportunities in business.  With a little push, women are known to become better agents of change, adopting, demonstrating and promoting activities that could lead to income generation.  These opportunities in accessing micro-finance, training and empowerment should enable women to undertake income generating activities and enterprises in agribusiness, industries, markets and entrepreneurships.

Un certain nombre de pays africains examinent leurs plans nationaux d'investissement en agriculture. Comment peut-on s’assurer que ces plans donnent la priorité aux besoins et aux priorités des femmes dans l'agro-alimentaire?

• Pour s’assurer que  ces plans donnent la priorité aux besoins et aux priorités des femmes dans l'agro-alimentaire ; il faudrait s’assurer dés le départ du bien fondé cet investissement, est ce que ces investissements vont améliorer et prendre en compte les priorités des femmes dans l’agro-alimentaire. Consulter les femmes dans les différentes échelles de la société en posant des questions suivantes.
• Nous voulons construire un bassin de rétention d’eau pour les cultures de contre saison dans votre canton qui pourra arroser également votre village et aider les femmes ameliorer  leur condition de vie afin de nourrir leur famille et partant toute la population de votre pays; quel est votre réaction ?
• Nous voulons installer une poissonnerie auprès de votre lac pour vous permettre d’améliorer la vente de votre poisson et permettre aux femmes d’avoir la faciliter et la transformation du poisson pour mieux le vendre avoir un revenu substantiel, comment apprécier vous  cet investissement ?

Quelles réussites sur l'autonomisation des femmes dans l'agroalimentaire, l'agro-industrie et les marchés agricoles pourraient être amplifiées par la BAD ?
Les réussites autonomes des femmes dans l'agroalimentaire, l'agro-industrie et les marchés agricoles que pourraient amplifier la BAD est le système qui consiste à mettre les femmes ensemble pour des champs collectifs ; accorder des crédits aux femmes à acheter des céréales et revendre pendant la période de soudure et les ouvrir aux marchés de la sous région afin de se partager les expériences de leurs sœurs de l’Afrique.

All this momentum can follow through and yield beyond expected outcomes, through better data gathering and collection... Proven ways to building #resilience in community economic development...To produce the grain needed for subsistence and the markets, #innovation

Going against the odds of an oral tradition in Africa urges new pathways to document existing success stories and best bet practices in gender, youth and agriculture...

Together, we can make it happen!

I am really astonished at problems identified so far, this is great and we have way forward! The infographics and WAAPP are fantastic and commendable! First of all, this is not my field, am an agricultural biotechnologist, complementing conventional breeding but i currently stay close to suburbs where homegrown farming is largely practise by women and this form large percentage of food access to the communities and are also transported to cities. The foremost challenge of these women farmers at grassroots is access to information on good farming practice, value addition and sales to neccessary community based industries at close vicinities. Therefore, the grassroot women farmers need: 1) these information in local languages by extension workers or nearby scientists that could play this role. on part time assignment or additional program. This is because more than 75% (figure is assumed) are uneducted. 2) trainers on better farm practices, planting impoved crops, value addition to farm produce, identifying local industries at vicinity at grassroot levels When these are achieved, our grassroot women farmers already have knowledge to improve productivity, then implementation comes in, which require financing for purchases and acquisitions for increasing productivity and closing food security gap.

Un certain nombre de pays africains examinent leurs plans nationaux d'investissement en agriculture. Comment peut-on s’assurer que ces plans donnent la priorité aux besoins et aux priorités des femmes dans l'agro-alimentaire ?
Je dirais qu'à l'instar de certaines institutions étrangères, lors des ateliers, formations et subventions, lorsqu'un homme et une femme à compétences égales doivent être choisis, que la balance penche du côté de la femme. Car quelque soit ce qu'on dit, les femmes se retrouvent toujours à la traîne malgré les bonnes volontés des états qu'on nous clame. 

CEO ASSIBA FÉE SARL
tel: 0022997592671

Young African Women need to acquire professional, managerial and leadership skills  which are vital to do business in agriculture.

With The ENABLE Program, AFDB should develop business skills and capacities in agriculture of innovative and entrepreneurial young African women.

New approaches based on a combination of skills development, personal development and mentoring by African experts and leaders in business should be developed.  

Young African women need mentoring to establish the knowledge, organization and confidence to successfully scale up and be succesfull in their agricultural businesses.

The ENABLE program must provide an innovative and sustainable institutional model, with an approach, instruments, materials and trainers responding to Young African Women needs.

Sharing experiences and Lessons learnt is really important. It will help Young women to scale up in their businesses and to be self-confident.

AfDB should identify, in collaboration with young African women entrepreneurs, opportunities for young women from different aspects of agricultural innovation.

It is also important to:

• do a diagnosis of opportunities from agricultural innovation and recognition of gender-related constraints,
• identify solutions and key partners and mentors, 
• facilitate training required,
• strengthen business and financial management skills,
• create  business linkages in the value chains concerned and across region
• Motivate Young women with a special Young Women Fund for Starting up.