Africa should reap from International Year of the Woman Farmer

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OPINION

By Solomon Kalema Musisi

In a historical speech made at the 2005 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.”

Nineteen years later, we witnessed a gesture that mirrored this focus on women's empowerment in the agricultural sector.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on May 2, 2024, declaring 2026 as the “International Year of the Woman Farmer.”

The launch ceremony for the year was held during the 179^th council of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN in Rome, Italy, on Thursday.

For Africa, any such global movement should come as a blessing and platform to influence improvement, for four major reasons.

Firstly, going by World Bank figures, 70% of the continent’s labour force is employed in the agricultural economy.

Secondly, Africa is ripe with agribusiness potential that is projected by the African Development Bank to grow to $1 trillion by 2030.

Thirdly, Africa holds an estimated 65 percent of the world’s arable land.

The fourth reason is the fact that African countries are readying for the next decade of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme, known in short as CAADP, a flagship continental framework for the sector.

From 2026 to 2035, the implementation of interventions under this programme will be guided by what is known as the Kampala CAADP Declaration, made by African Union Heads of State at an extraordinary summit that was held in the Ugandan capital in January 2025.

With the UN spotlight on 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, agricultural sector actors have to step up and show the world how far we can go in making progress against commitments made on the empowerment of women in and through agriculture.

The Kampala Declaration alone includes some pointers for Africa to pursue, during the next decade.

For instance, under the sixth commitment on inclusivity and equitable livelihoods, AU member states are expected to work towards

The declaration calls for the reduction in the yield gap between men and women under the sixth commitment and the empowerment of 30 percent of women in the sector under the 16^th out of 22 targets.

The Kampala Declaration also calls for the integration of more women in value chains and regional markets under the first out of 35 intervention areas and facilitation of job creation for women under the fourth.

Going by remarks made by Rhoda Tumusiime, former African Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the extraordinary summit in Kampala, there are 127 women aged 25 to 34 living in extreme poverty for every 100 men in sub-Saharan Africa.

This figure, drawn from UN Women research shines a light on another gap that stakeholders can turn into an opportunity to drive African development further.

To make an influential first step into the new CAADP decade, Africa will have to evoke more than the existing strategies and action plans and leverage synergies with the rest of the world, as well as UN organisations to ensure that the year for the woman farmer does not go by as an ordinary calendar year, especially for women in agriculture.

The new year should be seen as an opportunity for Africa to show baby steps towards achieving the targets of the CAADP decade.

The writer is a Senior Knowledge Management Officer Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries