Food security and African women

It can be said, without fear of being contradicted that the public does not fully appreciate the crucial role women play in enhancing food security for households, particularly in developing countries. This could probably be attributed to our total failure to understand the critical importance of the work that women do in agriculture, in spite of the blatant discrimination they suffer in their struggle to acquire the necessary assets for agricultural production.
Thus, the recent report of the Food and agriculture Organisation (FAO), The State of Food and Agriculture in the World, which makes the case for removing all forms of discrimination against women, who like their male counterparts, till the soil to produce the necessary products that are indispensable for our livelihoods, is welcome news indeed. It is a shame, the report asserts, that women are deprived of the full use of the critical assets needed in agricultural production, such as access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets that are available to men.

This is a pity, the report said, because if there was indeed a level playing field in which women could compete with men, agricultural production could have increased substantially and the number of hungry people reduced by about 100-150 million. That is equivalent to a 12 to 15 per cent reduction in hunger and would have made a significant reduction to an estimated 925 million people in the world who were undernourished in 2010, of which 906 million live in developing countries. (Courtney Dieterich)