The Rice-based Livelihoods - Gender and Youth Integration stream is focused on the integration of gender and youth in programs and processes to support the transformation of rice-based agri-food systems in East Africa.

Rice-based agri-food systems are increasingly gaining importance in achieving food and nutrition security and economic prosperity in the East Africa Region, following a pattern seen in West Africa, where more than 100 million livelihoods currently depend on rice as their primary source of dietary energy. Women and youth play a large and growing role in East Africa’s rice systems and constitute up to 80% of the agriculture workforce in some countries. They handle most operations, such as seeding, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and cleaning of rice and other cereals, and also homestead gardening of pulses, vegetables, and fruits, both for household consumption and for local markets. The role of youth, especially young women, is also pivotal with over 65% of the population under 25 years of age.

Yet, notwithstanding the central role of women and young people in the region’s rice-based systems, there is still an unsettling disparity in the support they receive from both public and private sources, a key reason behind their lower average productivity compared with men. They acquire only a small portion of their harvest because of the existing norms, policies, and laws that put them at a significant economic and social disadvantage. These include their rights to and control over land, hindering long-term financial investments and considerably affecting their farming approaches and income. Women also are at disadvantage in accessing inputs including fertilizers and quality seeds, mechanization, and knowledge on new technologies and innovations. In addition, their access to credit and financial resources is minimal because of current lending policies of financial institutions.

In addition, despite women’s substantial contributions to rice production and household food and nutrition security, they face heavy workloads and often have less decision-making power than men in the agri-food sector. They also control fewer resources within their households and communities. Youth, on the other hand, are marginalized in many countries, lacking sufficient employment opportunities, land if they choose to stay in agriculture, and financial capital if they attempt to enter the rural nonfarm economy.

This thematic stream will present new evidence and policy lessons on gender and youth integration in rice-based agri-food systems from East Africa and Asia, offering a comparative element to the analysis.

Attendees will learn:

• Transforming small-scale rice agri-food systems in East Africa will depend on strong women and youth participation and empowerment. Any interventions to address food and nutrition security and rice system transformation must factor in their roles in driving change in those systems.

• Targeting interventions in the rice system towards women and young people can enhance impact not only through the direct impact on their health and education but also through increasing their control over household expenditure, food purchases and feeding practices, and through promoting time- and labour-saving activities.

• Gender and household-level analyses are crucial to understanding these pathways, in addition to gender preferences and consumption patterns, identify women’s and youth’s empowerment, expenditures, and time/energy use specifically as having an important bearing for their own nutritional and livelihood outcomes and those of their families.

• However, serious policy reforms and investments are needed to support and strengthen the role of women and youth in both production and agri-business development and to shield them from exploitation by establishing enterprises with built-in service provision, and effective value chains that link them to input/output markets.

• With small-scale women and youth being the center of attention in several national and regional programs, they are now benefiting from more training opportunities and support directed towards equipping them to boost their farm productivity and profit margins. Moreover, small-scale women farmers are recognizing the benefits of organizing themselves into groups and cooperatives to pool their resources and knowledge and enhance their market access and bargaining power.

• We are still far from fully reaching real equity, but rice-based systems are now being developed to be more gender-sensitive and youth-friendly.

Presentation overview

Gender Equality and Sustainable Rice Agri-food Systems Transformation in Africa: Nurturing Synergies

Agri-food systems (AFS) include the interactions between and within the biophysical and human environments, which influence both the activities and the outcomes for different social and economic groups. Deeply embedded gender relations in societies and institutions shape the agri-food systems and determine the engagement of men and women and the benefits they derive. Social, political and market institutions which govern activities of a food system all portray elements of gender bias at different levels and in different forms. As a result, women are held back in vicious cycles of time and income poverty, curtailing their ability to engage with more productive nodes of the AFS.

Rice AFS globally, and in particular in Africa, are undergoing rapid transformation albeit at different pace and in different ways. While we have traditionally taken an instrumentalist view and explored how women’s engagement could support development of a sustainable rice AFS, it might be time to flip the question and ask how the transformation of Rice AFS can advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. There are significant synergies to be had if we addressed both issues in tandem.

While a shift in consumer preferences in Africa towards Rice offers a significant opportunity for commercialization and consequently enhanced incomes, the question of how this could be governed through appropriate policies and strategies to benefit smallholder women farmers, helping them retain control over production and income, still needs to be answered. Land continues to be a major constraint and several efforts aiming for land titling might not also have yielded the necessary results.

The labor intensive nature of rice production also offers a particular challenge, given the chronic time poverty women face and their limited access to mechanization technologies, cultural beliefs about who should use mechanization and, the constraints they face in hiring labor. The women farmers who are dependent on natural resources are very vulnerable to climate shocks and stresses. Therefore, strategies for enhancing their resilience and adaptive capacities are critical. While collective action and social capital are seen as a way out of some of these challenges, they also need thoughtful design to ensure women benefit from these.

We have very scant systematic evidence on what works in which contexts and why, to advance gender equality in transforming rice AFS. This presentation highlights some examples of effective approaches to address some of the challenges and why it is important to invest in a thorough understanding of the local contexts to design and implement effective gender-responsive strategies, policies and programs. There are generally no silver bullets and solutions cannot be simply transplanted. Rethinking power relations in the food systems and identifying entry points to trigger gender transformative change and analysing gendered nature and implication of policies like food aid, import tariffs, export bans, doubling rice production, harmonization of seed laws is critical.

About the presenter

Presentation overview

Youth Opportunities in Agriculture in Africa - Dr. Mastewal Yami

Africa has the youngest population in the world in terms of average age as 60 to 70% of the population is below 30 years age . The number of youth joining the labor market is estimated to be 440 million by 2030, and thus creating jobs for the youth is an important development challenge in the region . Most of the youth live in rural areas and have limited opportunities for productive employment . Governments and development partners responded to the problem through designing and implementing interventions targeting youth employment in agriculture. In addition, there is a growing interest in digitization of agriculture and green economy approaches as means to achieving agricultural transformation in Africa and beyond. This situation could influence the agricultural and food systems in Africa, thereby changing the long-established opportunities for youth. Even then, there is optimism that youth could actively tap into the opportunities. Success was observed in interventions which integrate capacity development, financial support for start ups, and continuous mentorship on the technical and financial aspects. However, isolated efforts have limited long-term impact on creating employment opportunities due to heterogeneous needs of women, gender-based constraints, and varied perceptions on opportunities. This suggests that the design and implementation of future interventions should be based on an integrated approach that considers diversity of youths’ aspirations and shared capabilities, interests, expectations, as well as challenges associated with access to resources and participation in collective action. The design of future interventions should also be built on strong partnerships among rural communities, academia, research, and the private sector for increased impact on livelihood improvements. Equally important, youth differ in their perceptions of “landscape of opportunities” in their areas depending on their socioeconomic background, career aspirations, and their acquired soft and hard skills required to benefit from the opportunities, among others . This calls for the need for understanding whether and/or to what extent the youth read the “landscape of opportunities” in their areas.

About the presenter