Source: Awoko
The West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAP) continues its deliberation on agriculture, social and environmental safeguards and gender, the Minister of Social Welfare Gender and Children's Affairs yesterday called for women's empowerment. Speaking at the second launch of the second part of the meeting which focuses on the social and environmental safeguards and gender, the Minister said development in the Continent is discouraging because of the governments neglect of the second "other half" which are the women.

And they [women] represent more than 50% of the population of every country represented at the conference, and if we are not making use of their potentials "we are shooting ourselves in the foot, making it impossible for us to move up the development ladder."
Kaikai stated that if an institution pays attention to women, they will achieve the millennium development goals which talks about women's empowerment and it is because of this factor that their governments have placed a lot of emphasis on empowering women.
However, despite the effort made by the government to empower women, there are challenges which the women experienced and this includes access to land.
The Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs Minister said, the women in the rural areas that are engaged in farming do more of the work but the women do not have access to these lands that they work on.
Executive Director of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Fatou Jallow said meeting of this nature will foster a peaceful agricultural environment adding that the "workshop provides us with the unique opportunity for countries to come together and share their success and challenges, such as handling social safeguards and gender issues."
She commended the World Bank and CORAF/WECARD for their support to the WAAP project, as this is aimed at mainstreaming environmental and social safeguards and gender dimensions through the regional agricultural programmes.
She also said that "this brainstorming exercise will allow participants to assess the level of implementation of social and environmental safeguards and broadly social development including Gender."
The Executive Director said 'we can achieve what we want if people work together to improve their livelihoods through sustainable and highly productive agriculture "but we can only do so, if due consideration is given to compliance with safeguards and gender requirements as prescribed in the legal documents."

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