cc Find Your FeetAfrican women play a critical role in ensuring the food security of the continent, writes Mary Wandia in the run-up to the
2009 African Union Summit (24 June-3 July), which has its official theme ‘Investing in agriculture for economic growth and development’. Highlighting that women contribute 60-80 per cent of the labour used to produce food both for household consumption and for sale, Wandia writes that improved women’s ‘access, control and ownership of land and productive resources are key factors in eradicating hunger and rural poverty’. Yet while land is ‘critical for improving women’s, social security, livelihoods and their social status’, culturally embedded discrimination continues to weaken their land rights and livelihood options, Wandia cautions. It is therefore essential, Wandia argues, for governments to ensure that women’s rights are comprehensively addressed in the AU ‘Africa land policy framework and guidelines’, scheduled for adoption at this year’s summit.
The importance of agriculture to economic development in Africa and the critical role that rural women play within this sector cannot be overemphasised, especially in smallholder subsistence agriculture, which is critical to ensuring the food security of the continent. About 73 per cent of the rural population consists of smallholder farmers (IFAD, 1993:6). In Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture accounts for approximately 21 per cent of the continent's GDP and women contribute 60-80 per cent of the labour used to produce food both for household consumption and for sale.[1] Estimates of women's contribution to the production of food crops range from 30 per cent in the Sudan to 80 per cent in the Congo, while their proportion of the economically active labour force in agriculture ranges from 48 per cent in Burkina Faso to 73 per cent in the Congo and 80 per cent in the traditional sector in Sudan.[2]