Women represent 90% of agricultural employment in many African countries, says UN Official

By Fatima Saka

The United Nations says that women account for most of Africa’s agricultural workforce and acutely feel the burdens of climate change, but too often their voices go unheard in farming, climate change and policymaking.

The statement was contained in one of the assessments a United Nations official shared in light of Tuesday’s U.N. observance of International Women’s Day.

According to Mehjabeen Alarakhia, the U.N. Women regional adviser for women’s economic empowerment for East and Southern Africa, “Women make up 80% of the people displaced because of natural disasters, and 14% more are likely to die in the event of a natural disaster.”

“women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care and domestic work implies that they are commonly responsible for fetching water or collecting cooking fuel. With the increased climate incidences, women need to invest more time to meet their family’s needs.”

Alarakhia said climate challenges, agriculture, education and women’s leadership are part of this year’s theme: “gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.”

“The high dependence on agriculture also means that women are highly exposed and vulnerable to the effects of climate change and disasters. Women represent 90% of agricultural employment in many African countries”, she stated.

Alarakhia further illustrated that, With women and men having different access to productive resources, other inequalities can follow, such as access to improved seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tools and equipment, labor, credit, and other production factors.

Also, “Women are disproportionately affected by climate change, environmental degradation and natural disasters. Women may need to walk farther to fetch water, exposing them to increased time poverty but also to further risks of gender-based violence,” she said.

However, facilitating for climate change, “the key aspect is including women in the planning and decision-making processes. Women generally are aware of their own needs and know how to articulate them, we have recently completed a study that looked at government spending on agriculture,” she said.

Additionally, Alarakhia said, Governments in Africa had committed to allocate 10% of their national budgets toward agriculture. We found that where women were not included in planning, they were not able to benefit. But in countries where the allocation did not reach the 10% target and yet women were part of planning, they were more likely to benefit from the allocations — and the interventions were more sustainable.

In addition she stated that the fourth industrial revolution and the agricultural transformation necessary to mitigate effects of climate change, is absolutely important for girls and women to be part of this change.