Women Leadership in AgTech: Transforming the Agriculture and Food Sector
The World Bank Group Invites interested individuals to the webinar "Women Leadership in AgTech:Transforming the Agriculture and Food Sector" to be held on Thursday, February 25, 2021
To attend, complete this registration form
Webinar Details
- Chair: William Sonneborn, Senior Director IFC, The World Bank Group
- Speakers: Ponsi Trivisvavet, CEO and Director, Inari Mariana Vasconcelos, Co-founder and CEO, Agrosmart Johanna Hartung, Project Lead in Ghana, German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ)
- Discussant: Dina Umali-Deininger, Practice Manager, East Asia and Pacific Region, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, The World Bank
- Panel Moderator: Lesly Goh, Senior Technical Advisor, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, The World Bank .
Webinar Abstract
AgTech is the convergence of agriculture and technology, with investments totaling over US$10.1 billion in 2017. However, women-led startups consistently receive a smaller share of these investments. Industry-wide, women-led companies received just two percent of the total venture capital investment in 2017—only US$1.9 billion out of the total US$85 billion invested by venture capitalists that year. In agriculture more broadly, women make up about half of the world’s farmers, but consistently receive a smaller share of land ownership and farming inputs.
Just 7% of AgTech deals and 3% of the record-breaking volume of dollars invested in the sector 2018 went to female-founded teams, according to the report released by AgFunder, Karen Karp & Partners and The New Food Economy in collaboration with S2G Ventures. “A structural bias exists which prevents female founders and CEOs from accessing capital to start and grow their Agri-FoodTech enterprises,” from the report, Money Where Our Mouths Are to investigate funding disparities between male and female AgTech founders.
Understanding the specific impediments women farmers face is necessary, but a more holistic approach that focuses on the Food System as a whole would enhance women farmer’s abilities to benefit from government support and could lead to greater food and nutritional security, reduced poverty, and substantial gains in GDP.
World Bank Group is launching the inaugural webinar series to increase the investment in AgTech, focusing on women led AgTech. During this webinar, we will hear from the women leadership in AgTech and learn about the key innovations using technology to empower the small holder farmers with data and advanced analytics to improve the productivity of agriculture which in the long run will lift them out of poverty. You will learn about their product offering for advisory to provide farmers with comprehensive information on prices, crop planning, and weather, pests, and disease control. In some cases, digital marketplace that connects farmers to buyers and suppliers more seamlessly...