Economic Empowerment
Source: Premium Times
The World Bank has said that Nigerian woman should be guaranteed improved access to finance, as they are often responsible for the bulk of the farming tasks in the country. The Bank, which noted that about 57 per cent of households in Nigeria are categorized as agriculture households, said that while women undertake the responsibility of processing, transportation and harvesting crops in the country, men are involved in the clearing and planting of the crops.
To deliberate on the different and complementary levels of involvement between men and women in the agricultural value chains, the Bank said it is organizing a technical dialogue on Gender and Agriculture in partnership with the Federal Government.
The dialogue follows an innovative data and research on women's participation in the agriculture sector in Nigeria that was developed last year.
The World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, said research done by the World Bank and the Federal Government has come as a response to the recommendations that came out of the Gender Policy Dialogue, organized last year in conjunction with the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID).
"Although 35 per cent of women are employed in the agriculture sector, and 44 per cent of the country's female headed households are involved in agriculture activities, only 18 per cent of rural plots are managed by female farmers," said Ms. Marie-Nelly. "Boosting women's agricultural productivity in Nigeria will require not only giving women access to land, but more critically improved access to finance as well as valuable information"
Despite clear challenges, she said Nigerian women are making progress in the agriculture sector, pointing out that women produce 16 per cent less in value terms than men per hectare of cultivated land, adding that the overall figure masks regional differences.
Though the gap in productivity between male and female plot managers remains marked at the national level, the director said it has been successfully closed in some parts of the country.
In northern Nigeria, women produce 28 per cent less than men, which is in line with estimates from other countries in Africa, pointing out that in the southern part of the country, however, overall figures for female farmers look quite different from the rest of the continent: there is no difference in how much they produce per hectare as compared to men.
It was gathered that the technical dialogue on Gender and Agriculture has the objectives to disseminate the latest quantitative and qualitative data and research on gender and agriculture in Nigeria to be presented, including a descriptive report on women's role in agriculture in Nigeria using the new agricultural data in the General Household Survey.
The report conveys an analysis of male and female differences in agricultural productivity that uncovers the factors that are associated with lower female agricultural productivity to identify key areas for policy interventions, and an analysis of the effects of CDD interventions in the agriculture sector on women's economic empowerment.
The dialogue is also to provide an opportunity for debate amongst government officials, civil society and private sector organizations and development partners on how that data and research could help define and operationalize gender interventions in the agriculture sector.
"There is considerable scope to increase women's control over farm land, with plots remaining overwhelmingly managed by men, with only 18 per cent of rural plots managed by female farmers," she said.
"The full potential of Nigerian female farmers will only be tapped if their common challenges and different experiences across regions and social groups are fully acknowledged by agriculture programs," added Markus Goldstein, Gender Practice Leader, World Bank.