Could women-friendly, agricultural-focused innovations help establish rural-to-urban market linkages and increase food security?

In Tanzania, women make up over half of the agriculture sector’s work force. They also carry the burden of performing the most labor-intensive tasks, including harvesting, threshing, and transporting produce, all while taking care of their families. Despite their substantial responsibilities, women have insufficient access to the resources – primarily to land ownership and financial credit – which would help put them on an equal footing with men.

Women also physically face difficulties in reaching markets, particularly urban ones, primarily due to constraints against actually leaving their homes while childcare and other household responsibilities loom. Moreover, because they generally lack control over assets and marketing, women often have insufficient say over how their households drive production or use their agriculture-derived income. This dynamic inhibits women from fully contributing to the agricultural sector, and to their countries’ economic development. Instead, most women have no choice but to sell what little they can at rural markets, where demand for their products may be insufficient, or prices particularly low.

The Innovations in Gender Equality (IGE) to Promote Household Food Security program seeks to empower women in agriculture by harnessing Tanzania’s vibrant civil society to establish supportive, collaborative and meaningful partnerships that will serve as a leading voice advocating for women’s rights in the agricultural sector. Formally launched in April 2013, this two-year US $1.3 million program will also work to identify, pilot and bring to scale innovations that reduce the burdens faced by female farmers in production, processing and accessing urban markets.

 In 2012, Land O’Lakes International Development began implementing a program to tackle how Tanzania’s female farmers have been impacted by these issues, in an effort to change paradigms for women’s leadership in agriculture. With the support of the American people, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), we are piloting a bold approach that is working to make women key decision-makers and innovators who can fully harness the resources they need to be effective advocates for their own futures.

The program began by working with a multitude of diverse stakeholders across the country to establish the Coalition to Advance Women in Agriculture in Tanzania (CAWAT). Already registered by IGE as a self-governing entity, CAWAT will be the driving force behind IGE’s three intended outcomes:

1. Identify, disseminate and promote women-friendly agricultural technologies: CAWAT will issue a call for women-friendly innovations and technologies that will reduce labor or time; improve women’s health, nutrition and safety; and increase the benefits that women derive from agriculture. In partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) D-Lab, innovations with the most potential for impact will be piloted and tested, while successful innovators will be trained on business incubation.
2. Build the capacity of women to be leaders: Utilizing the Women’s Empowerment Agriculture Index (WEIA), IGE will conduct assessments in collaboration with CAWAT to determine constraints to women’s leadership in agriculture. This will help design customized training, which will involve inspirational role models, to provide women with the right skillsets for realizing and maximizing their leadership potential.
3. Promote policy changes for gender equality in agriculture: Again, through WEAI-driven assessment findings, IGE will identify three key policy priorities in collaboration with CAWAT. Together, they will define a strategy to advocate for desired policy reforms.

Through CAWAT and IGE, our approach aims not only to empower women to become leaders, but also to maximize the financial impact of their farming endeavors. By helping to turn labor-saving ideas into actual tools and services, Tanzanian women will be better prepared to effectively sell their products in urban markets, secure the best prices, reduce post-harvest losses and have greater control over household expenditures, all while increasing the food security and nutrition of their families.

To learn more about the IGE program, download this fact sheet. Learn more about CAWAT on Facebook.