Empowering women farmers: One Acre Fund’s commitment to gender-smart agriculture

A typical day in Pyatta Village, Nigeria, is filled with the hustle and bustle of farm life. Among the women who make up the majority of the farmers in the village is 24-year-old Keziah Danjuma Ubandoma. When financial challenges cut Keziah’s education short, she turned to farming, not only out of necessity but also as a pathway towards becoming a business owner and eventually continuing her studies.

Agriculture is the backbone of Nigeria’s economy and, indeed, that of sub-Saharan Africa where it employs 60-70% of the population and contributes about 20% to the region's GDP (FAO). This sector, dominated by smallholder farming, supports communities through crop cultivation, livestock rearing, and agroforestry. Staple crops like maize, cassava, and millet sustain subsistence farming, ensuring a reliable food supply for the communities, while cash crops such as cocoa, coffee, and cotton drive economic growth.

Despite its vast potential, the region faces challenges that hinder agricultural productivity. Farmers grapple with climate change, limited access to quality farm inputs like seeds, inefficient value chains, and restricted access to regional and international markets. Women farmers, who form over half of the agricultural workforce (FAO), face additional barriers such as cultural restrictions, unequal access to credit and resources, limited land rights and decision-making power, time poverty due to domestic responsibilities, and limited access to safe and affordable transportation. Addressing these challenges is essential to unlocking sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural potential and achieving inclusive growth.

One Acre Fund: Unlocking opportunities for women farmers

One Acre Fund's direct-to-farmer services, like credit, delivery, and training; are inherently designed to tackle numerous challenges faced by women farmers, leading to over 50% of our clients being women. These strategies include:

1. Introductory credit sizes to build financial literacy and prevent over-indebtedness.
2. Group loans and training that align with cultural norms and foster peer support.
3. Oral and pictorial-based training to accommodate all literacy levels.
4. Representation of women in our extension services to ensure relatable and trusted guidance for women farmers.

While we are pleased to have achieved gender balance within our client base, we recognize that this is just the starting point. True gender transformation requires addressing systemic challenges across the agricultural value chain, including unequal access to land, credit, and farm inputs, and exclusion from lucrative market opportunities. By tailoring our interventions to women’s unique needs and challenges, we aim to support women smallholders and ensure sustainable progress. Through this, we hope to not only positively impact individual farmers’ livelihoods but also contribute to the broader economic and social development across sub-Saharan Africa.

To effectively tailor our model for women, we are focusing on multiple areas to better understand the challenges they face and to build the technical capacity required to drive systemic change.

(1) Conducting formative and design research

Understanding local contexts is crucial to create truly inclusive and transformative program designs, especially because each of One Acre Fund’s programs operates within its own unique cultural and socioeconomic context. 

To do so, we are conducting gender inclusion assessments and targeted formative research through focus group discussions and key informant interviews, initially focusing on Rwanda, Kenya, and Burundi. These efforts will guide us in moving from gender-aware to gender-smart and locally-adapted programming, ensuring meaningful impact for women farmers across diverse cultural and socioeconomic landscapes. This will also support the piloting of new and innovative solutions that will empower women farmers like Keziah while driving equitable agricultural growth.

(2) Building gender-responsive monitoring & evaluation systems

Data-driven insights are key to building One Acre Fund’s programs. Each season, we select a representative sample of farmers from the populations we serve and conduct thorough in-person surveys on topics such as harvests, profits, quality of life, and more. This approach enables us to deeply assess the impact we are creating. With that, we are also implementing a gender measurement strategy focusing on:

1. Gender-disaggregated productivity & Income: Evaluating whether women benefit equally from our programs and identifying gaps.
2. Women’s empowerment & agency: Beyond agricultural and economic outcomes, assessing decision-making power, control over resources, and agency within households and communities.

Such data will ensure actionable insights which will help inform more inclusive programming and long-term improvements for women farmers.

(3) Building technical capacity for system-wide change

One Acre Fund is aware that driving systemic change requires robust internal capacity. Therefore, we are integrating a gender lens across all our operations by:

1. Developing a comprehensive organization-level gender strategy to guide our efforts to reach and support both women and men farmers, on and off the farm.
2. Recruiting gender-focused technical experts for evidence-based interventions.
3. Investing in gender sensitization training for staff at all levels.

These foundational efforts position us to build teams and secure resources to deliver meaningful, lasting change for women in farming communities.

Looking ahead

One Acre Fund remains committed to creating a future where women smallholders like Keziah can thrive alongside men farmers. By building technical expertise, developing data-driven strategies, and integrating a gender lens across all operations, we aim to drive greater economic and social returns for all of Africa’s farmers.