From farm to fork: The women championing agricultural transformation in Africa

By African Development BankJun 11 2020 (IPS-Partners) From Sudan to Mali, Senegal to Mozambique, and Zambia to Mauritania, women are changing the face of agriculture, adapting and innovating to tackle the challenges of climate change, and feeding the continent’s growing population. African women are actors along the entire agricultural value chain, as farmers, livestock breeders, food processors, traders, farm workers, entrepreneurs and consumers. Through the African Development Bank’s Technologies for African Transformation (TAAT) initiative, millions of African women have gained access to new agricultural technologies that have boosted their crop yields, enabling them to tap new markets and increase their incomes . Improved seeds can help Africa’s smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women, to produce high crop yields even in areas plagued by climate change-related drought, floods and locust swarms that can destroy an entire harvest. Add in the constraints recently imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s a tough time to be a subsistence farmer. Fathia Mohamed Ahmed, who belongs to a collective of two dozen women farmers in Sudan’s Darfur region is one such farmer. Through the TAAT initiative, her collective has been provided with high quality seeds for cultivating sorghum, a grain suited to hot, dry conditions. Sorghum, also known as millet, yields a grain that is rich in carbohydrates, protein and other nutrients that can be made into porridg...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Food & Agriculture Health Women & Economy Source Type: news