Women and youth play key role in accelerating food systems transformation | Spiked.co.zw

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Accelerating food systems transformation, particularly in a changing climate within a digital era, requires careful consideration of the needs, priorities, and capabilities of a diversity of men and women to contribute and benefit from agrifood systems.

These were the remarks of Deogratius Magero, the Youth Engagement Manager at the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) while presenting during a session at the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda running from 2 to 6 September 2024 during a side event titled ‘Gender Responsive Approaches Driving Food Transformation.’

This side event is co-organized by African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), Global Solutions Initiative, and Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition.

“Despite numerous political commitments, the gender and age gap in agrifood systems is expanding. Evidence shows that closing the gender gap in agriculture would add nearly USD 1 trillion to the global economy, and 45 million fewer people would be at risk of food insecurity. However, existing laws and sociocultural norms, alongside deeply entrenched economic and political structural barriers, continue to widen women’s underrepresentation in leadership and decision-making roles.

‘’Therefore, while addressing everyone’s roles in production, processing, trading, and households’ food consumption, we must consider how the women are positioned in the agrifood systems, their accessibility to innovations, their vulnerability and resilience to climate change, their agency and participation in decision making and how the policy environment influences all these. In this session, we showcase CABI’s approaches, strategies, business models, and best practices that have worked to improve the engagement of young people and women in agrifood systems while creating income-generation opportunities through agribusiness,’’ Magero said.

Over the last two years, CABI has forged strategic partnerships with farmer cooperatives, government entities, private sector agribusinesses, and off-takers to facilitate meaningful youth engagement in agriculture in Africa, starting with Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia.

These collaborations have played a crucial role in providing youth with opportunities for training, mentorship, linkages for input and market access as well as resource mobilization.

Under the PlantwisePlus program, the CABI youth engagement initiatives have focused on empowering youth in agricultural service provision. Over 370 young people have received training and support to establish and run their agribusinesses, offering valuable advisory, pest management, and input supply services to farmers.

To facilitate ongoing learning and remote support for youth in agribusiness, THEY have recently launched an Entrepreneurship Course in Agribusiness on the CABI Academy, their online learning platform.

“We are looking forward to learning how young people can effectively engage with all the self-study modules in the Academy and how it can be used as part of our scaling strategy,” Magero added.

Addressing the same gathering, Edidah Ampaire, the Senior Program SpecialistInternational Development Research Centre (IDRC), underscored the need to increase the numbers of women and youth in the leadership of agri-food systems.

She highlighted some of the strategies that have worked in ensuring women’s meaningful participation in the leadership of agrifood systems.

“Offering training opportunities purposely created to advance women is important for their career enhancement. Thus women and youth need advancement in science or research skills for them to take up leadership roles. Trained women can influence more inclusive decisions; are leading from lived experiences and are more likely to fight inequalities,” she said.

An example she gave is the One Planet Fellowship (an initiative that supports emerging researchers through a career development model that combines mentoring, scientific training, and networking opportunities) that supported the participation of 30 West African Francophone women scientists in the One Planet Fellowship. It offered an upgraded leadership and negotiation skills course to all women registered for the One Planet Fellowship.

The other strategy is empowering women to become agri-preneurs. She said every project must have a gender equality and inclusion strategy that elaborates on how to reduce gender inequalities and empower women.

Amapire highlighted digital solutions that put money in women’s hands. The Precooked Beans project in Uganda, and Kenya, implemented by the alliance of CIAT and Bioversity and Mastercard Foundation, developed a digital tool used to register individual men and women farmers, track produce volumes, and pay in their personalized mobile accounts. This ensured that women received and controlled their incomes from beans. Before the innovation, husbands or male relatives received the money and women did not access it. This tool empowered women as autonomous business owners, motivating them to expand their businesses.

A fisheries project in Uganda introduced improved solar tent driers to dry silverfish as a strategy to reduce workload for women (traditional drying was done by women on beach sand and is labour intensive) and increase their incomes by securing a better market.

While women met to train in using the new technology, they started savings and credit schemes as an additional source of income. They were able to increase incomes and own boats (space traditionally occupied by men), diversify into small ruminants and poultry, single moms constructed houses, and reduce GBV by 30% in fishing communities.

Patrick Komawa, the Director of Climate Change and Food Security in the Presidential Initiative on Climate Change, Renewable Energy and Food Security (PI-CREF), Office of President, Sierra Leone, said his department is embarking on several initiatives to promote the participation of women and youth in agrifood systems.

“We have supported women and youth to cultivate high-value cash crops. We also trained them in climate-smart agriculture and established a Youth Entrepreneurship Fund. We partner with technical and vocational training institutions to build the skills of women and youth in mechanisation, irrigation, as well as the processing and packaging of agricultural produce,” Komawa said.