To mark International Women’s Day Celebration on March 8 with its theme “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow,” the African Women’s Collaborative for Healthy Food Systems would like to share with you our article ‘African Women Speak Out for Agroecology’. This grew out of our storytelling project in five African countries and is a useful resource for celebrating the contribution of peasant and indigenous women to healthy food systems in Africa. 

The Collaborative is a Pan-African initiative led by peasant and indigenous women with a deep commitment to healthy food systems. We seek to inform key audiences of the importance of local, agroecological and equitable food systems. In the last year, the Collaborative has given voice to rural women, enabling them to share their stories through a range of media, local and national. The article draws attention to the perspectives and achievements of peasant and pastoralist women during the COVID-19 pandemic, while conveying the lack of rights and resources they face, and the urgent need for collaboration and strategic partnerships to increase their access to productive resources.

The full article is available in French and English on the links below:

English – African Women Speak Out For Agroecology

French – Les femmes africaines s’expriment en faveur de l’agroécologie

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Excerpt:

African women speak out for agroecology

By Ofure Odibeli

A 2021 study by the UN’s FAO concludes that around a third of the world’s food is produced by smallholder farmers on less than two hectares of land. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the percentage is much larger, with some 60% of the population engaged as smallholder farmers in food production and processing. At least half of these farmers are women who play a crucial role in the food chain. African women specialize in seeding, weeding, transplanting, harvesting, post-harvest work, processing, marketing and, in some areas, land preparation. They also prepare forest fruits, freshwater fish, and livestock products for consumption by their families and communities.

Women have a special relationship with seeds as sorters, savers, and sharers. Healthy seeds are the source and strength of plants and animals that are central to community food systems. In rural Africa, for as long as women farmers can remember, they, their mothers, their grandmothers and their own daughters have watched their plants grow to then choose the healthiest, best tasting individual plant’s seeds to gather. These seeds will, in the coming years, reliably produce the vegetables, herbs, groundnuts, beans and grains that nurture the growth and health of their own families and communities. Through their various roles, they ensure that communities and regions are food secure, healthier, more dynamic, and able to contribute more to the country’s economy.

Yet the day-to-day realities of African peasant, pastoralist and indigenous women are harsh and have become even more constrained in the last two years with the COVID-19 pandemic. While their role as food producers and providers might be recognized at a high level by the African Union, the United Nations and some African governments, a large proportion of rural women experience extreme marginalization, exclusion from decision-making, denial of essential resources such as land, water, credit, information, and technologies, and disregard for their deep knowledge of local circumstances and feasible solutions.

Faced with these enormous challenges, rural women farmers continue to show admirable tenacity as they grow nutritious foods to feed their families and communities through the use of agroecological farming practices.