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• how does the gender gap in agricultural productivity occur and why?

I think very low literacy levels of Women in Africa are one of the causes of the gender gap in Agricultural productivity in Africa. Most women are not as educated as men in Africa. This is because, for a long time, cultural traditions were in favor of male child as far as access to education and information was concerned. Poor access to education and information by Women, due to low literacy levels created a big gender gap in agricultural productivity. In Malawi for example, women play an important role in subsistence farming, yet their productivity is limited because they do not have access to important information and adoption of new technologies becomes a challenge.  Efforts have been put in place through Farm radios, but I think it's one thing to hear a thing, and its completely another thing to understand, be able to process and make the best use of information. Literacy still scores high, as far as the gender gap in agriculture production is concerned

The other cause of gender gap in agricultural production in Africa could be differences in Land rights. Traditionally in most parts of the countries in Africa, men are the ones who own land with few exceptions.  Thus men and women may not have equal access to land most of the times. This impacts, decision making in women, on what kind of crops they can grow. For example, having an access to a small piece of Land, most likely a woman would do the least possible to grow just enough food for her household yet a male who has an easy access to land might even grow crops that would benefit him more than a female counterpart.

The lack of balance on household responsibilities such as taking care of children in children, preparing food and keeping a household would be another cause of gender imbalance in Agricultural production. Keeping household is mostly perceived as a responsibility of a woman in most parts of Africa, as a result women are “robbed” of the time they would have invested in their agricultural production. Their allocation of time to agricultural activities would not be the same as that of males. This significantly affects their production and creates a production gap between men and women.   In addition, women may not have enough physical capital to increase their agricultural productivity and unfortunately, most technologies that have been developed and adopted so far, are not sensitive to physical abilities of women. Most technologies such as making compost manure are very labor intensive.

• What is the role of agricultural research in bridging the gender gap?

Agricultural research has to intentionally be gender sensitive to bridge this gap. Agricultural research should seek to come up with technologies that will take into account the needs for both men and women.  There has been a lot of bias, where gender was considered as a social subject, I think gender is pure science too if it is understood very well. So either from a Laboratory, a field, a community, research at all levels should be inclusive of gender needs without which it will not benefit the end users.

In addition, Agricultural Research institutions should seek to train more women so that they can take up some decision-making and technology development positions. This will fix the gap too.  For example, speaking with reference to a country in the southern Africa, there were manual irrigation pumps that were designed for farmers to use in irrigation farming, this was quite a good investment in agriculture but it did not benefit men and women, farmers, equally because the pumps were too heavy to be manually operated by women. If gender were taken into consideration right from the beginning this technology would benefit both men and women. It was also a good Indication that we lacked women engineers who would actively participate in the designing of this pump who would easily take note of the physical needs of operating the pump.

• What are the implications of this gender gap, especially for women in subsistence agriculture?

The widening gender gap is directly affecting Women agricultural productivity. The benefits that women get in agricultural productivity are far much lower than what they would actually get if the gap was bridged. From a Malawian perspective, women head a good percentage of rural households yet these women cannot be productive as they are supposed to be, most of them are stricken by poverty. Since subsistence agriculture is a source of livelihood for the majority. This creates a very big economic gap between men and women.

• How have these realities been integrated into interventions and projects to reduce the gender gap in agricultural productivity and address the challenges of subsistence agriculture?

I think these realities have been integrated but to a lesser extent. I personally think we can do more to address the challenges in subsistence agriculture, by improving the literacy levels of women.  Agricultural research and interventions need to actively involve women farmers as well as invest in the future farmers (the Young Women and Men – The YOUTH) we need solutions at a grassroots level.

• How should the Bank’s Feed Africa Strategy; through its flagship initiatives and programs be used to reduce the gender gap in agricultural productivity and support a strong foundation for Africa’s agricultural transformation?

Establish technology innovation centers for Agriculture. This would involve farmers, early research scientists in Agriculture. The core of these centers should be, developing technologies that are gender sensitive.

Coordinate gender programs with agricultural institutions in Africa to incorporate gender lessons in their curriculum as early as possible.  We can only do better if we know better. And so it would be great to teach the younger generations about gender and agriculture so early, and when they have a clear understanding of it, it will not take too much effort in the future to develop policies and technologies that are gender sensitive in agriculture, it will be just normal to do it.

Invest in training more agriculture women scientists in Africa. I think, much as we know agriculture is great, it has not been understood so. Most young people think being an agriculturist is the least of all the professions. Accelerating careers of young scientists in Agriculture more especially women will help bridge the gap

• Which successful initiatives on improving women’s agricultural productivity could be scaled up by the AfDB?

Without bias, I would strongly encourage AfDB to Scale up and Support AWARD. It is the most successful initiative I have come across on the continent of Africa. AWARD has ripple effects.