Women’s access to ICTs for Agriculture and reflections on CTA at the European Development Days 2018

In the just ended European Development Days 2018, The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) sponsored a session on women’s access to ICTs for agriculture. Through this event and supporting women’s access to ICTs for agriculture, CTA is helping to close the gender gap and improve livelihoods.

The question of ICTs and Women

Within ICTs for development, this event comes heels after the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women and its review on the role of ICTs in empowering rural women and girls encapsulated in the CSW47 Agreed Conclusions.

Meanwhile, despite the advancements in technology and digitization the gender gap continues to widen. Statistics show that “women are 14% less likely than men to own a mobile phone and 25 % fewer women and girls use the internet” (GSMA, 2015:6 ).

The impact of this is adverse to rural women or female farmers, who often fail to access relevant information (on farming practices, process, and markets, etc). The golden question echoes, ‘Can access to ICTs by women and girls close the gender gap and improve their livelihoods?’

The CTA Panel Discussion at EDD 18

A panel discussion that was hosted by CTA, highlighted access to appropriate technology, skills training, engagement with the private sector and gender sensitive ICT policies as critical areas needed to improve women’s access to ICTs for agriculture.

The panel noted the triple challenge – digital, rural and gender -that the rural divide presents for women. For a detailed summary of the discussion read here.

CTA efforts in promoting women access to ICTs in agriculture

VALUE4HER - In March 2018, CTA launched a programme called VALUE4HER , which aims to increase the prosperity of women in agriculture by linking them to international buyers and markets.

In this project CTA promised to work with regional partners to support women-led agribusiness in Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, Western Africa and the Caribbean.

Some of the key activities include :

• Development of a digital database of women entrepreneurs for each region.
• Training women on business leadership and managerial skills.
• Development of one women’s agribusiness e-hub in each region, which will offer services to women entrepreneurs.
• Organisation of one ‘business-to-business’ fair and match-making event in each region.
• Provision of a competitive innovation fund to enhance linkages with women lower down the value chain and initiate efficiency measures, including the use of ICTs.

More information here 

Pitch AgriHack - Supporting young entrepreneuers through the Pitch AgriHack – the aim of this approach is to address limited support for young e-agriculture strat-ups who lack of capacity in business and financial management.

Through a talent scouting via the ICT applications for agriculture – hackathons and/or Pitch AgriHack (the latter targets young companies’ already offering e-agriculture services) – CTA seeks to provide opportunities that will lead to the upscaling of the pilots into sustainable platforms or services.

CTA in the GODAN Action Project - CTA also supports the creation of an enabling environment for women’s data usage within the framework of GODAN Action Project.

I will end this piece by this quotation:

“To ensure that these young people, especially women, reach their full potential it is imperative that we equip them with the skills and opportunities needed to progress a sustainable and productive agri-food sector,”  - CTA’s director Michael Hailu

The above news items has been prepared using sources cited in the links provided and by CTA. 

Related news

1. CTA. Engaging Women in ICT Solutions for Agriculture. Read here
2. CTA. Pitch Agrihack seeks to promote greater engagement of young women. Read here