by: Margaret Abiodun Adesugba

Doing evidence-based gender research on agricultural and food systems in Africa can be challenging even under normal circumstances. Collecting quality gender data to inform research and policy without losing the meaning of gender in the male-female dichotomy and actually making sense of the data collected for use by different stakeholders remains a huge challenge. There is also the challenge of understanding and unpacking the diverse cultural and social implications of “doing gender” in Africa’s complex agricultural and food system. Also, the priority of most governments seems to be women’s inclusion in programmes with the expectation that it will increase gender equality rather than actually understanding and tackling the fundamental gender issues that continue to reinforce gender inequality. Despite the progress in Africa’s food and agricultural systems especially with value chain development, farmers still face several uncertainties like flood, drought, food insecurity, market price fluctuations among other and women continue to be more disadvantaged than men.

Now, add these to the uncertainties and challenges that COVID-19 brings. The first questions I had when the lockdown was enforced in most African countries is what if farmers cannot farm because of the pandemic? How will COVID-19 affect men and women in agriculture? Will it further widen the gender inequality gap in agriculture? How would women in particular cope without participation in markets especially in rural areas where most markets depend on contact with people and online markets and delivery systems are almost non-existent? Would Africa’s budding agricultural value chain system that depends on a large proportion of smallholder farmers survive the disruptions that COVID-19 brings? What about food security, food scarcity and market prices? What new dimensions of vulnerabilities will COVID-19 expose among rural households and their livelihoods as farmers? What will happen to all the progress that most African countries are beginning to make in the food and agricultural sector? And as researchers, how will COVID-19 change how research, especially the data collection part, is done in Africa’s rural areas where the most viable and reliable means of data collection especially qualitative data involves close contact with respondents who need to trust you? One thing that is certain is that the way data is collected will have to change.

While some researchers like me, and organisations are adapting to new ways of collecting data via mostly telephone interviews and online surveys, it is becoming clearer now more than ever that most rural areas in Africa are not ready or equipped to sustain these methods of data collection. Apart from access to phones, how many African smallholder farmers have access to internet or computers or even improved mechanisation? Also, while the transition to working from home for researchers like myself who have access to internet, resources, and the institutional support to do so was fairly easy, the same cannot be said for most researchers and students studying agriculture in African countries. Most researchers that I have spoken with have had to use their own funds to navigate working from home.

I had asked a young gender expert, Grace Muinga who works to bring improved technology to farmers based on research needs in Kenya, Zambia, Ghana and Uganda what her experience has been during the pandemic. Because the lockdown started in most African countries towards the beginning of the farming season, the likelihood that most farmers will not receive support from programmes and projects or even technology that they need during the planting season was high.  As Grace puts it, the impact of COVID-19 will certainly last longer than anticipated despite the fact that the infection rate in most African countries remains low. This means that research, advocacy and policy responses on gender, agricultural and food systems in Africa has to be adapted to meet the reality of COVID-19 and prepare farmers for other unforeseen events. Beyond providing technology, the way contact is made with farmers will have to change such that communication can be sustained in the absence of the possibility of physical contact. Governments as well as non-governmental organisations in several African countries have created several intervention programmes to reach out to farmers to reduce the impact of COVID-19 among farmers. However, some farmers may still be left out and the gendered impact remains to be fully understood. Since the infection rates in most African countries have slowed down, priorities seem to be shifting from the impact of COVID-19 in Africa’s agricultural and food systems especially at the local level.

The pandemic was not anticipated-it took us all by surprise. We were helpless and only hoped that the farmers would take their own initiative and plant their crop without project support. We are yet to assess the gender impact of the pandemic. We will only be able to tell the full impact of the pandemic in the next year. Grace Mnuiga, Gender professional, Kenya.

COVID-19, Women, Rural Markets and Food Systems

From my experience with working with households in rural communities in Nigeria, women are the unsung heroes in rural markets and communities. Pre-COVID-19, I had travelled to different rural markets as part of my PhD for data collection. Market days are essential for women in rural areas. Like their male counterparts, they contribute significantly to how rural markets operate, but usually have limited stance on how markets are designed and how decisions are made. They also often struggle to get permanent stalls to sell their products. With the way rural markets operate, it is difficult if not impossible to have any social distance as there are limited infrastructure to enact social distance rules. The same also goes for food safety. Most of the rural women in the markets I visited had no means to ensure that the food safety is ensured in such open markets where they operate.

With the COVID-19 lockdown, access to markets became limited most especially for women who usually have low mobility. Food prices increased as the cost of transportation also increased since most means of transportation that farmers in general use charged higher transport rates for the higher risk they had to take to travel against lockdown rules. While those in formal employment were still adjusting to the transition to working from home, it dawned on me that most of the women I met in rural communities do most of their off-farm work from home already. However, in order for them to get income from their “off-farm work from home”, they have to participate in markets that they cannot bring home with no or limited protection from any potential infection. The hike in food prices also caused disruptions to food supply systems. From a gender perspective, women are more likely to face even higher vulnerability since they are usually responsible for having their families fed and without the income they get from participating in markets it becomes even more difficult.

Lessons

I think one lesson African governments and non-government organisations could learn from the pandemic is that systems and institutions need to be developed to ensure that farmers are better prepared to thrive in diverse situations.  As a researcher, what is worrisome is that there appears to be limited information on strategic actions that organisations, especially governments involved in policy-making, have on how to tackle the impact of COVID-19 from a gender perspective. As such, there is a need to strengthen connections between social science and gendered research on Africa’s agricultural and food systems and governments’ strategies and policies.

Photo credits: Margaret Abiodun Adesugba

 

Margaret Abiodun Adesugba is a Ph.D. Candidate and Commonwealth Scholar at the Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University. She also holds an MSc in Agricultural Development Economics with distinction from the University of Reading, UK (2012) where she studied as a Diageo Foundation Scholar and a BSc (Agriculture) with first class honours from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (2010). She has worked with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Nigeria on several projects and as a consultant with the Department for International Development (DFID-Nigeria) in collaboration with IFPRI. Her research focuses on gender and agriculture in the global South and North. Specifically, gender inequality in agriculture, agricultural and rural development policies and programmes in the rural economy, sustainable livelihoods in rural geographies, rural institutions, and institutional arrangements, influence of community-based cooperatives on development of rural agriculture, collective action, vulnerabilities and resilience.