Top Policy Lessons in Agriculture
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Washington, DC
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Across Africa, agriculture is a
primary sector of employment, and African women provide
about 40 percent of the agricultural labor across the
continent. Yet women farmers face systemic barriers to
success, leading to large gender gaps in agricultural
productivity that range from 23 percent in Tanzania to 66
percent in Niger. These gender gaps not only represent major
untapped economic potential but could also yield sizable
gains for African economies if they were closed. For
instance, in Nigeria, closing the gender productivity gap in
agriculture could boost gross domestic product by an
estimated US2.3 billion dollars and potentially as much as
US8.1 billion dollars due to spillovers to other economic
sectors. Several factors driving female farmers’ lower
productivity are the time and bandwidth taxes from care and
household responsibilities, limited access to and control of
hired labor and other productive inputs, skills and
information gaps, low financial liquidity, and restrictive
social norms. Over 90 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s
extreme poor, who are some of the most vulnerable to shocks,
are engaged in agriculture. In the face of crises, such as
the COVID-19 pandemic and global price shocks, that can
exacerbate food insecurity, women farmers need targeted
support and access to productive inputs that can secure
their livelihoods and mitigate existing gender inequalities.
Impact evaluation evidence from the Africa Gender Innovation
Lab points toward policy solutions that can address many of
these constraints and help women farmers reach their full potential.
Palabras clave
AGRICULTURE, GENDER EQUITY, GENDER ECONOMICS, AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY, GENDER GAP, WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE EFFECT ON GDP, AFRICA GENDER POLICY, GENDER INNOVATION LAB, WOMEN AND AGRICULTURE, WOMEN AND SOCIAL NORMS