FAO Regional Office for Africa

Women empowerment is key to fighting hunger and poverty

FAO and AUC convene meeting to deliberate on rural women issues

Women farmers in Cameroon - FAO project in support of family farmers in the central region of Cameroon (Photo: ©FAO/Helena Moreno Gonzalez)

23 October 2017, Accra – When rural women are empowered with resources, equipped with skills and decent jobs, they become key driving forces in the fight against hunger and poverty. 

In a welcoming address at a three-day Africa-wide consultative meeting with rural women on Gender and Agenda 2063, organized jointly by the African Union Commission and FAO, Mahawa Kaba Wheeler, Director at the Women, Gender and Development Directorate of the African Union Commission, underlined the key role of AU to impulse change, quoting the example of the recent target on 30 percent of land made available for women and which is on track for several countries. 

“It is now time to transform objectives into action and to report progress with an ambitious and focused gender strategy –Focus, think big and bold”, she declared.   

FAO policy on gender equality adopted in 2012 aims at advancing the equality of voice, agency and access to resources and services between women and men in sustainable production and rural development.

Serge Nakouzi, FAO Deputy Regional Representative for Africa, emphasized that rural women are central to FAO’s mandate to achieve food security for all. “This meeting clearly exemplifies the unique and very special relationship between the African Union Commission and FAO in serving rural women who feed Africa.”

“Therefore, investing in rural women is imperative for raising agricultural productivity, eradicating hunger and malnutrition and reducing rural poverty towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”, he remarked. 

Ghana’s Deputy Minister for  Gender, Children and Social Protection, Gifty Twum-Ampofo, urged stakeholders in the empowerment of rural women to enhance the role of women in agriculture and development by addressing issues of maternal health, land tenure and credit facilities. 

“What women need is not micro support, rather, increased mechanization, technological innovation, education and skills development, for women to intensify their financial inclusion in agribusiness and empower them with knowledge and skills to use modern technologies in agribusiness and agricultural value chains”, she stressed.

On her part, Bernadette Lahai, Vice-President of the Pan African Parliament, underlined the need for women to participate equally with men as decision makers in rural institutions in shaping laws, policies and programmes, with women and men having equal access to and control over decent employment, land and other productive resources.

“We expect to achieve the collective goal of ownership of the new strategy and to harmonize existing gender equality and women's empowerment strategies of the AUC and other AU organs; we will pursue the monitoring and tracking tools to assess progress of implementation on an annual basis developed, a detailed action plan for implementation and the capacity required to successfully implement the new strategy”, Lahai said.

Elizabeth Atangana, Rural Woman Leader from Cameroon and FAO Ambassador for Cooperatives, emphasized the need to reinforce investment for women farmers. She called for institutional and policy support, access to rural finances, to sufficient land for decent income, and the need for access to a minimum of 2 to 3 ha of land per woman, as well as to water, energy and markets. 

The meeting defined priority intervention areas for the African Union (AU) in empowering rural women in food security and nutrition, agrifood systems and value chain and management of natural resources in the context of climate change.

Participants in the consultative meeting include rural women leaders from 25 African countries and key stakeholders from Regional Economic Communities, AU Member States, UN organizations, civil society, the private sector, academia, research institutions and the media.