07 August 2009
Clinton Cites Concern for Women Farmers During Africa Trip
Says future of African women is of “personal importance” to her
Washington — Women may “hold up half the sky,” as the Chinese proverb says, but in Africa, as in much of the developing world, they also do most of the strenuous work of farming and deserve special support in the battle to end hunger on the continent, says Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In Kenya August 5, on the first full day of her seven-nation August 4–14 trip to Africa, Clinton told hundreds of African economic, trade and finance ministers — most of them men — that the future of Africa’s women is of “great personal importance” to her.
Speaking at the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum in Nairobi, Clinton said, “The social, political, and economic marginalization of women across Africa has left a void in this continent that undermines progress and prosperity every day.”
She said, “We know across Africa women are doing the work of a whole continent — gathering firewood, hauling water, washing clothes, preparing meals, raising children, in the fields planting and harvesting, and when given the opportunity of economic empowerment, transforming communities and local economies.”
President Obama’s administration wants to help, the secretary added, and is committed to strengthening agriculture in Africa, with a recent pledge of $3.5 billion toward partnership programs on the continent.
But “to succeed in this work, we must work with women,” Clinton emphasized. With women composing 70 percent of the agricultural work force in Africa, she said, “we need a good collaboration to make sure that women are equal partners with men farmers all the way through the process.”
Clinton’s concern for African women is not new, according to U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer, who recently shared an anecdote about the secretary at a discussion on women and food security sponsored by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).
(MCC is a U.S. government corporation that spurs development through grants to countries with a proven record of political and economic reform. Seventy percent, or $4.5 billion, of its total worldwide grants of $6.4 billion go to 10 African countries.)
Verveer recalled a trip to sub-Saharan Africa she made in the 1990s with Clinton, who then was U.S. first lady. “We were riding in a van with an economics minister … who was opining about the economic decisionmaking process and … that women really had no role in the formal economy of the country.
“As far as our eyes could see … there were fields. And in those fields were hundreds of women bent over, many of them with little children [on their backs] … some very young, bringing wood for fuel, others carrying water.
“And the first lady said to this gentleman, ‘How can you say that, sir? Everything we see here is women hard at work helping make a difference in this country. Can you imagine if all of them stopped working, even for one day? What would happen?’”
After her AGOA speech, Clinton and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack toured the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), where she again touched on the plight of women in Africa and the special burden they carry as farmers as well as mothers and caregivers at home.
At KARI Clinton met with participants in the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) program, a two-year fellowship for African women scientists sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
Noting that the AWARD program supports women “working to improve farming here in Africa and to fight hunger and poverty,” Clinton said, “We need women represented in our laboratories as well as our fields.”
Julia Sibiya, although not an AWARD recipient, is an agricultural scientist and lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe currently doing graduate work at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
She recently told America.gov via e-mail that from her observations and a survey she conducted in southern Africa, “the majority of those involved in small-scale agriculture are actually women. And of these women, the majority are above 45 years old.”
Sibiya also confirmed Clinton’s concern for the added burden African women carry, saying, “Most of these women struggle, as they have limited income, relying mostly on pensions, and end up just practicing subsistence farming.
“However, they are willing to try out new technologies — but they indicated they would wish the government or any NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] who are interested in agriculture to provide assistance, for example: training, equipment, seeds and loans,” the African scientist concluded.
A transcript of Clinton's remarks at the AGOA Forum and a transcript of her remarks at KARI are available on America.gov.
Reader comment:
15 September 2009
09:29:19-0400
the unfortunate scenierio in africa is that women who consistute about 70% and work so hard to earn a living through agriculture have never had the opportunity to decide any benefit when it comes to aids grants on farming. the men decide, plan and little or nothing is given to this women to assist them in their farming thereby making them remaing on the susistence level
