S1 Episode 3 - How can we advance gender equality and food security in Africa?

[Music] The program resulted in an 11% point increase in the likelihood of a wife possessing land in her own name. A one-third hectare increase in the amount of land that wives hold in their own names, and a 44%age point increase in the likelihood that a wife makes decisions about the types of crops grown on her own land. [Music] Hello there. Welcome to episode number three of the podcast "Minding the Gap" conversations on gender. I am Chetida Dalesandro and I work at ECDPM where I focus on how to make food systems more sustainable, especially in Africa. I will be your host for today's episode. Today we're going to talk about the vital topic of women's roles in agri-food systems across Africa. We will explore the challenges they face and discover ways to equally equip women and men to participate in agri-food systems transformation. Almost two-thirds of women in Africa are employed in agri-food systems as food producers, agri-dealers, processors, distributors and traders. They're also often responsible for sourcing and cooking food for their families. Yet multiple sources of inequality constrain women's participation while being an empowerment. Women tend to earn half the wages that men make and also generally have less access to employment opportunities and productive resources such as land, inputs, technology, finance. They also tend to be more food insecure than men, especially rural women, an issue that has only deteriorated after the COVID-19 pandemic. We can then say that gender inequality is both a cause and a consequence of food insecurity. As such, to enhance women's participation and agency in agri-food systems, gender responsive policies are needed across many sectors including health, education, social protection. With me today to discuss the efforts being made to overcome both food insecurity and gender inequality, is Dr. Debisi Araba. He is a public policy and strategy specialist and a visiting researcher at Imperial College London. Debisi is also a member of the Malabomompe Liepano, a group of international agriculture experts who guide policy choices that accelerate progress towards food security and improve nutrition in Africa. The panel recently released a report precisely on how to put women at the center of food systems transformation in Africa. Which we will explore in just a minute. But first, welcome Debisi. Thank you Cecilia, it's a pleasure to be here. Debisi, as I was just saying, the Malabomompe Liepano produced a report this year called "Bridgeing the Gap", policy innovations to put women at the center of food system transformation in Africa. Can you tell us what are some of the key challenges that women and girls face in agri-food systems on the continent that you found while working on this report? Thank you very much Cecilia. Gender inequality is a global issue. It's not restricted exclusively to Africa. At the Malabomompe Liepano addressed this issue through a report we published just over a decade ago in 2012. This was the first time we addressed the issue of gender inequality. We have now included gender inequality issues in all subsequent reports as a cross-cutting policy issue. Now over a decade later, we have revisited the status of women in Africa's agri-food systems to propose further actions to put women at the center of food systems change and to reflect on policy opportunities for the way forward. Women's capacity to contribute to efficient, resilient and sustainable food systems and their transformation is severely curbed by a variety of social and systemic challenges that diminish their opportunities to exercise agency both within the household and beyond. Women are often prevented from being active leaders and shapers of their food environment, the consequences of which can be far-reaching. A lack of access to land, inputs, appropriate technology, information, finance and employment opportunities severely under my women's role in food systems, their empowerment and their economic growth and well-being. It also makes them less able to adapt to a change in climate. So these are a few of the systemic issues that are influencing the inequalities of women's participation in Africa's agri-food system. In your report, you talk also about how African governments are making strides in empowering women and ensuring their active involvement in food systems. Could you share some real-life examples of initiatives across Africa that have transformed the lives of women making a difference in the way they participate in the agricultural world? Yes, this report provides a regional focus on the status of women specifically in Africa, Africa's food systems, with specific emphasis on public policy efforts contributing to women's agency and empowerment. We have quite a few continental level frameworks guiding gender equality in Africa. One that I wish to highlight is the Africa Union Gender Strategy, which was launched at the Africa Union Summit in February 2019. It's a framework that sets out the Africa Union's goals for improving gender equality and empowering women on the continent between 2018 and 2028. Four pillars of this gender equality strategy are aimed to improve the lives of women and girls in Africa. They include a focus on increasing opportunities and achieving positive outcomes for women, including helping to eliminate illiteracy and harmful traditional practices such as early childhood marriage and female genital mutilation. The second pillar focuses on ensuring the rights of women and girls are not compromised. The third pillar focuses on implementing progressive laws and policies that protect women's rights. And the final fourth pillar outlines ways to increase the visibility and leadership of women. So at the country level, one example of interventions is the land certification program in Ethiopia. Now this involved the joint land certification for both husbands and wives. Impact evaluation subsequently on the programs supporting the land certification program have shown a significant increase in women's empowerment. The program resulted in an 11 percent point increase in the likelihood of a wife possessing land in her own name. A one-third hectare increase in the amount of land that wives hold in their own names and a 44 percentage point increase in the likelihood that a wife makes decisions about the types of crops grown on her own land. The land investment for transformation project lift added complementary services for those who had received land certificates to improve their access to credit and agriculture inputs and to participate in land rental markets. Notably, instead of a single certificate for a plot of land being issued to households, certificates are now issued to each landholder in the households, meaning females members of female members of household now have their own individual certificates. This is transformational in that women in Ethiopia now have access to land titles with which they can invest and secure assets in their own name. Another example is in Ghana. In Ghana, the health sector gender policy was developed in 2009 to complement the health policy of the country. The health sector gender policy focuses on all social cultural barriers that delay or prevent women from accessing quality healthcare services. Some of the achievements under this policy include improving the number of nurses to population ratio and the share of the population covered by the national health insurance scheme. It also improved the access to care in pregnancy and access to care in pregnancy has reached almost universal levels across the country with more than 90% of women currently making at least one contact during pregnancy and 87% making a minimum of four contacts during the nine months of their pregnancy. In addition, significantly more infants are now delivered in public health facilities across the country. The report provides four interesting case studies. You just mentioned land certification and healthcare services in Ethiopia and Ghana, a two very important sectors were practical actions on gender equality are being taken. Let's take the case of a country that has focused on promoting gender equality across the board. Togo, what can you tell us about their approach? Among the most impactful of the policy innovations promoted by the Togo Lee's government has been the adoption of the quality national de equality, a de galité de genre. That's the PNEG in English, that's the national gender equality, equity and equality policy of 2011. The government of Togo formulated this policy to facilitate the mainstreaming of equity, equality and empowerment of women and girls across all sectors of the economy and planning processes including their effective participation in decision-making [BLANK_AUDIO] levels of Togo's development process. Since its inception, it has formed the basis for national budgetary allocations, gender mainstreaming across all sectors, and has influenced legal amendments to meet its ambitions. As a result of the government's efforts to carry out this element of the PNEG, the share of all women accessing credit in Togo has increased from 45% in 2015 to 66% in 2020. The PNEG also formed the basis in 2022 for the first gender responsive ministerial budgets of the government of Togo set by the Prime Minister. Again, the PNEG has triggered several legal and institutional reforms to protect women's rights in Togo. So this is another transformative policy that I would like to highlight from the report. The fourth country started in the report is Rwanda. The country developed a vision to better integrate women in agri-food systems and provide them with better economic opportunities. Can you tell us a bit more about it? Well, Rwanda leads the continent on integrating gender equality, international development policies, period. In Rwanda's 2050 vision, the third pillar states that there is a focus on agriculture for wealth creation. It aims at equally equipping women and men to participate in food systems transformation. Another policy framework from Rwanda is the National Gender Policy of 2021, which has eight priority areas, three of which focus on strengthening gender mainstreaming and accountability across national sector policies, planning frameworks and strategies in the public and private sectors. The second is ensuring equal access and control of productive resources and economic opportunities for women and men, boys and girls. And of course, improving gender equality in education, health, and social protection programs, and finally, the mainstreaming and purposefulness of these enabling policies that I've just mentioned have positioned Rwanda as a beacon on the continent. And it's ensuring that it leads on most gender equality indices for equal and shared prosperity on the continent of Africa. So Debisi, what did you and your team at the Malabomon Pelihe panel learn while putting together this report? Well, I would say between the initial reporting and now a lot of things have changed, but some things remain the same. Gender inequality holds us back from fulfilling our collective aspirations and potential as a continent. Now, through each of these country case studies, the four country case studies, we acknowledge that there are technical and adaptive or systemic aspects to the challenges of mainstreaming gender equality across the continent. But we also show that these challenges are not insurmountable. All stakeholders have a role to play on the journey to success, and we hope that the key messages highlighted by this report paved the way for the willing. In the report, we highlight a few key factors drawn from the case studies as enablers for success. And these include consolidation of African policy frameworks. There's a strong track record of commitments by the African Union regional buddies to ensure and enhance women's position in society and in food systems. These commitments, however, need to be consolidated coherently. The African commitments to the UN Food System Summit, that was held in 2021, and the follow-up to the UN Food System Summit, as well as the Post-Malabo Agenda, provide a basis and the opportunity for it. We need to implement and resource policies and institutions. In order to meet global continental and national commitments on women's equality and on food systems transformation, governments must make a dedicated effort to implement their pledges to these issues. There needs to be increased political representation. To address these deeply rooted systemic inequalities and to ensure that the policy are designed in a way to meet the specific needs of women, women must be equally represented at all levels of government and decision-making processes in food system services. We need to center women in decision-making. We need to empower women and to strengthen their agency and role as change makers in food systems. There's an urgent need for deliberate programming of interventions and to promote the equality and equity across all aspects of food systems that also promote sustainable food systems, growth and transformation. We need to foster inclusive behavioral change to accelerate the transition to non-discriminatory governance structures at all levels. Programming interventions must also sensitize boys and men to the challenges that undermine the empowerment of girls and women. We need to tailor products and services for women, and these tools must be tailored to meet the specific economic and social needs and circumstances of women and must be made easily accessible, given current constraints of women's time use and mobility. This includes making financial as well as extension services more accessible to female members of the agrofood system. We need to step up investments in science, technology, engineering and math. A strong educational foundation provides choices for one's future. To truly and sustainably empower women in the agrofood system, education and training of women on pertinent subjects must be readily accessible. Finally, we need to collect data for accountability and monitoring, although progress has been made comprehensive and reliable data reflecting women's participation in and contribution to African food systems remains limited. These are the lessons that we've learned, Cecilia, from the four case studies. We hope that other countries from across the continent of Africa can take these on as lessons to invite and incorporate into their own domestic policies for a race to the top. To ensure that, we bridge the divide in the inequality between genders in Africa's agrofood systems. Thank you, Debisid. These are really interesting insights and good recommendations for other African countries to follow through. Outside of these country case studies, do you have any other examples of innovations that countries have put in place to advance gender equality in Africa? Yes, I do. Between 2012 and 2014, Nigeria incorporated the use of digital financial technologies, digital farmer database, to extend agriculture input subsidies to smallholder farmers across the continent. Now, between those two years, we had a 300 percent increase in women's participation in access to financial services, over 2.5 million women received access to input subsidies. And this was a technology enabled agnostic intervention in the agrofood sector. And we hope that in the future, we get more of these technologically enabled interventions to support the mainstreaming of women's participation in Africa's agrofood systems. That's a really interesting case, looking at the digital aspects. And speaking about the evolution of technology, are there any blind spots that we need to be cautious about? Yes. As we look to the future, we're seeing a proliferation of the use of large language models, LLMs and artificial intelligence trained to serve as either front end or back end support in the delivery of goods and services in Africa's agrofood systems. I think one word of caution would be that we pay attention to the biases that are being included into these artificial intelligence models or large language models to ensure that real world biases don't translate into the software world. We need to ensure that we are mainstreaming gender issues, all the knowledge and insights that we're gleaning from years and decades of research are translated into the development of the next generation of artificial intelligence and large language models that will support the delivery of goods and services for Africa's agrofood systems. So Debussy, where do we go from here? What are your thoughts regarding the use of this report in the future and how to stimulate further actions on gender equality in food systems? Well, thank you Cecilia. So where do we go from here? Hopefully we go to the top. And we reach the destination, which is bridging the divide in gender inequality in Africa and ensuring a truly equal, a truly prosperous, a truly inclusive African agrofood system. Our hope is that decision makers, both in the public and private sectors, can read this report, glean insights that they can then domesticate in their own respective countries or organizations to ensure that they learn the lessons from these four countries highlighted in the case studies. And then they take those lessons and continue on that journey towards gender equality in their respective organizations and countries. So success is gender equality and we're going to get there together. Thank you Debussy for sharing your insights with us. Your points really show show that gender equality cannot be an afterthought if we are to achieve food and nutrition security and promote a transformation towards more equitable and resilient food systems. That's all for today. Next time you will be with Sara Janicello to talk about the reasons why it is so difficult for women to access justice. Together with her two guests, she will zoom in on Morocco for an insightful discussion on the next between gender and justice in this North African country. Until next time and thanks for listening.