International Women's Day 2023

Female farmers across Africa are working hard to increase food security and incomes in their households and communities, but they often struggle to access the financing and resources they need to make this a reality. 

If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry people in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million due to productivity gains (source: FAO).

Given the two-way link between gender inequality and food insecurity, we urgently need to increase support to women farmers. Investing in women is a win-win: women reinvest up to 90% of their earnings back into their households - that's money spent on nutrition, food, healthcare, school, and income-generating activities - helping to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty (source: FAO).

At One Acre Fund, 60% of the farmers accessing our financing are women, and we provide the resources and training they need to grow more food, make more informed choices about nutrition, and access markets where they can sell their produce.

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Creating environments for women to lead

We're also helping to build environments in which women farmers can take up leadership positions within their communities - for example as a group leader of their farming group or as one of our tree nursery managers.

46% of our front-line field staff - the staff who deliver our training and support to farmers year-round - are women. They bring their female perspective to their work and ensure we're delivering a service that truly benefits women. 

And we’re excited that we have leaders like Shaila Mtamila from our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning team in our organization, who are dedicated to strengthening gender inclusion in our work. You can read the interview with Shaila about strengthening gender inclusion in agricultural research here.