African Women Start Agriculture Businesses

African women are the glue that binds the society's fabric together. Even in urbanized African societies, women are the backbone of family and national stability.  Despite the enormous contribution women make to all aspects of the culture they are often forgotten and rarely consulted when new initiatives and technologies are implemented.   This is especially true with respect to agriculture and food security.  Despite the fact that African women do most of the farming and produce 70% of farm produced food they are the ones to bare the brunt of the worsening food security situation on the African continent.

Researchers maintain that even though women are the pillars of the African agricultural sector, they lack the technological skills to boost productivity.  Technology can help women farmers by reducing their workload while increasing their productivity and income.  By using a value chain approach that places emphasis on all aspects of the production process and teaching basic business skills designed to view the farm as a small business, agriculture can be a profitable business for African women.  With the establishment of micro finance funds poor subsistence farmers would have access to small loans enabling them to buy seedlings and other farm equipment needed to expand their farm into a small agricultural business.

This strategy was implemented in a Kenyan village where the women maintained acres of banana trees.   Teaching these women new technologies along with business skills enabled them to increase banana production.  This greatly reduced malnutrition in the community and significantly increased the average income.  The development of these women owned banana farms not only led to the economic empowerment of women in the village, but also appreciably contributed to the reduction of poverty by providing food, education and better health for many families.