Four dire challenges faced by women in agribusiness

Founder and Executive Director of the Agrihouse Foundation, Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa, has talked about some challenges that women face in agribusiness that they would like to be addressed.

Discussing the topic “Closing the agricultural gender gap” with Eunice Tornyi on eTV Ghana’s African Women’s Voices show, she first drew attention to the fact that the contribution of women to the agricultural industry has not been well documented or quantified.

“There’s no organic data of women across the country who are really contributing. When you talk about National Farmers’ Day and who is winning, it’s always the men. There were only a few times where Mabel came on top to win the second best National farmer and even with that, the documentation was only around that time and afterwards, nothing was heard about her”, she said.

She urged that if the government is to do well to look into this, then we will be able to confirm the kind of contribution that women are making in the industry.

Another challenge, she mentioned is how women have a hard time accessing land because of their gender. “We just came from shooting a documentary in Tumu and there was a woman who had to go with her husband to the chief before she is given a land. A woman cannot go directly and say they need a land for farming and this is a huge challenge.”

Again, she reported that most women in agriculture lack basic tools that are required to carry out their job at the production stage and some even have to rent these items just to be able to carry out their farming which will in turn support her own community.

“Another thing is that the women are not only into farming. Some are also into processing but we don’t have enough processing equipment around and that is why we record a lot of losses when it comes to post-harvesting and all that”, Alberta added.

She concluded that if women had all these problems solved, then they would be able to do their work more easily and efficiently, and in turn support the agricultural industry.