Food, fuel and financial crisis:
Effects on the participation of rural
women in the African agricultural economy
Samuel Sey,
Program Officer
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
Female and male rural actors are impacted differently by crisis
• Women’s access to financial services are more limited;
• Women face greater challenges in access to and
ownership of land for production;
• Women and other disadvantaged groups are more
vulnerable to agricultural risks; they disproportionately bear
the brunt of crisis in the current free market regime;
• Effects are felt most seriously at the households level
where women have the greatest responsibility for welfare
and social reproduction.
•
AGRA’s Program for Africa’s seed system
• Focuses on ecology based breeding to take into account
local problems like drought, maturity, color, storability, cook
ability, pest and disease resistance, grain size and shape;
• Some projects are specifically looking at development of
varieties tolerant to drought. Crops being considered for
this constraint are maize, beans, sorghum, cow peas and
rice;
• Develop drought tolerant /early maturing seed varieties;
• The focus is to improve resilience of smallholder farmers,
the majority women in their production in the face of crisis.
Agro-dealers stock small packages of inputs
to fit the needs of the smallholder farmers
Market Access program
• AGRA’s Market Access helps to:
– Reduce transaction costs
– Promote value addition
– Increase demand of food
staples through alternative
uses
– Promote an enabling
environment for local and
regional trade of food staples
Improving male and female capacities to optimize
incomes increases their ability to weather crisis
Traditional Grain
Storage in Mali
Improved Grain Storage
facility in Tanzania used
warehouse receipt system
THANK YOU