Women Farmers Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction
The need to focus on women farmers' productivity, which can be an effective engine
for social change, has become increasingly clear in sub-Saharan Africa. Women have
a significant role in farming and post-harvest activities in most countries in the
region. Nevertheless, a complex set of rights and obligations reflecting social and
religious norms prevail within rural communities; these dictate the division of labour
between men and women and act as constraints to women farmers. An
understanding of women farmers' role, its importance and these constraints is a
prerequisite to devising policies to improve productivity and socio-economic
development.
The role and importance of women farmers
In sub-Saharan Africa women contribute between 60 and 80
percent of the labour for food production, both for household
consumption and for sale.7 Moreover, agriculture is becoming a
predominantly female sector as a consequence of faster male
out-migration.8 Women now constitute the majority of
smallholder farmers, providing most of the labour and managing
a large part of the farming activities on a daily basis.9

In sub-Saharan
Africa women
contribute most
of the labour
for food
production.

Traditionally, the roles of men and women in farming differ in Africa. Men clear the
land and women undertake most of the remaining farming activities, particularly
weeding and processing. Since the colonial period, men have been most active in
cash crop production, while women have been mainly concerned with food and
horticultural crops, small livestock and agroprocessing. Women's activities have
tended to be homestead-based, for biological and cultural reasons. Men and women
have also been responsible for their own inputs and have controlled the output. In
sub-Saharan Africa, men traditionally owned land, but plots of land have been
cultivated or managed jointly or separately by men and women.
Box 4
CASSAVA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN
Cassava is the most widely cultivated tuber in sub-Saharan Africa and the second most
important food staple in terms of per capita food energy consumed1. Because of its
tolerance to extreme ecological stress conditions and poor soils, cassava plays a major
role in reducing food insecurity and rural poverty.
Cassava production in the region has grown sharply over the last two decades. Between
1980 and 2001, total output rose from 48 to almost 94 million tonnes, while the area
under cultivation rose from 7 to 10 million hectares. Today, sub-Saharan Africa
accounts for more than half of global cassava production.
CASSAVA PRODUCTION, AREA HARVESTED AND YIELDS
Country

Production

Area harvested

Yields

1980

1980

1980

2001

2001

2001

(Million tonnes)

(Million ha)

(Tonnes/ha)

Nigeria

11

34

9.6

10.8

Democratic Republic of the Congo

13

16

7.0

14.5

Ghana

0.2

0.6

8.1

12.1

United Republic of Tanzania

0.4

0.9

10.7

6.8

Mozambique

0.9

0.9

4.1

5.8

Uganda

0.3

0.4

6.9

13.0

Angola

0.3

0.5

3.4

6.0

48

94

10

6.9

9.1

124

176

14

16

9.1

10.7

Sub-Saharan Africa
World
Source: FAOSTAT.

Although cassava is generally considered as a traditional subsistence crop, the recent

introduction of new varieties (such as the TMS2 varieties of the International Institute of
Tropical Agriculture) has transformed its status from that of a low-yielding faminereserve crop to a high-yielding cash crop. With the aid of mechanical graters to prepare
gari (roasted granules, a value-added product), cassava is increasingly being produced
and processed as a cash crop for urban consumption.
This trend is partly attributable to the fact that cassava has multiple uses. As a food, it
can be used for baking, cereals and snacks, soups, beverage emulsifiers, powdered nondairy creamers and confections. Cassava starch is also used in various industrial sectors,
such as paper manufacturing, cosmetics and pharmaceutics.
Cassava as a "woman's crop" is becoming more evident. Women undertake most
processing activities, such as peeling, washing and transporting to grating and milling
sites, where cassava meal and grated cassava are stacked in sacks and placed in
traditional processors for the starch to drain off. Nowadays, it is mostly women and
young girls who undertake the roasting and sieving of gari.
A recent study3 shows that women's labour is becoming increasingly significant in
production also. Men still play central roles in land preparation and ploughing but women
provide the bulk of the labour for weeding, harvesting, transporting and processing. The
later stages of transportation, processing and marketing are also handled mainly by
women.
The recent rise in commercial cassava production will accord even greater importance to
the role of women, as it is in the post-harvest activities that women's labour
predominates (see Figure).

Ghanaian women peeling cassava roots

Cassava constitutes an important part of the diet of many poor people in Africa.
- FAO/18293/P. CENINI
There are some exceptions, however. For example, grating and pressing are handled

largely by men in Ghana and Nigeria, where these tasks have been mechanized.4 In
Nigeria, men and women have a equal share in processing. This may be explained by
the fact that women's access to resources is limited. The study found that men own
twice as many food-processing machines as women, although the services the machines
provide are available to both men and women.
In addition, women still lack decision-making power in many instances. When large
proportions of the products are intended for sale, household decisions are mostly taken
by the male head, who usually dictates how the cash earned will be used. Women are
allowed to control only small cassava sales, the proceeds of which are used to buy
necessities for the family such as soap, matches and salt.
Cassava continues to gain importance in many sub-Saharan countries, both as a food
staple and a cash crop. Women's labour inputs for production, harvesting, transport and
processing are very substantial and increasing. Targeted policies with regard to credit,
gender-sensitive extension services and technological and institutional changes geared
towards women would further advance productivity in this sector. The empowerment of
women is the key to success in the cassava economy.
1

Cassava provides 286 kilocalories (kcal)/person/day out of a total of 2 198

kcal/person/day.
2
Tropical Manioc Selection varieties.
3
The Collaborative Study of Cassava in Africa (COSCA) undertaken by the International
Institute of Tropical Agriculture from 1989 to 1997, based on data drawn from 281
villages in six African countries (F.I. Nweke, D.S.C. Spencer and J.K. Lynam. 2002. The
cassava transformation: Africa's best-kept secret. East Lansing, USA, Michigan State
University Press).
4
Ibid.
These farming patterns are changing over time. Many countries have seen an
increasing trend in female-headed households. By the mid-1980s women headed an
average of 31 percent of all rural households - a much greater proportion than in
other regions. There is much variation within this trend, however, ranging from a
proportion of 10 percent in Burkina Faso and the Niger in the early 1990s to 46
percent in Botswana and 72 percent in Lesotho in the late 1980s.10
Moreover, population pressure and off-farm employment
opportunities for men have led to an increasing proportion of
women becoming de facto farm managers. In such households,
women's autonomy and authority vary over time. In some
cases, male migrants return to work on the farm during the
peak agricultural season. Men are often absent from the rural
labour force when in their twenties and thirties, and women
exceed men in the age group 20-44. For example, in Kenya, about 86 percent of
farmers are women, 44 percent of whom work in their own right and 42 percent of
whom represent their husbands in their absence.11 As a result, a higher proportion of
women than men are engaged in most phases of the production cycle for food, cash
crops and livestock - in addition to their household work and small income-earning
activities.
The traditional
roles of men
and women
farmers are
changing.

Women are also engaged on a more regular basis than men in all farm activities and
phases of the production cycle. They provide most of the labour and manage many

farms on a daily basis. As Table 7 suggests, women work much longer hours than
men and spend more time on farming activities, even though the figures are far from
being homogenous.
Table 7
AVERAGE DAILY HOURS IN FARMING AND NON-FARMING ACTIVITIES BY
GENDER, 1994
Country

Farming
Men

Non-farming
Women

Men

Women

(Hours)
Burkina Faso

7.0

8.3

1.7

6.0

Kenya

4.3

6.2

3.8

6.1

Nigeria

7.0

9.0

1.5

5.0

Zambia

6.4

7.6

0.8

4.6

Source: K.A. Saito, H. Mekonnen and D. Spurling. 1994. Raising productivity of women
farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank Discussion Paper 230. Washington, DC.
Gender differentials in agricultural productivity and constraints facing
women farmers
While men and women generally face the same external constraints, they have an
unequal access to human-controlled factors. They have different endowments, such
as land rights and education, and different access to technologies, labour, capital,
support services and credit. This disparity results in differentials in productivity to the
detriment of women.
A number of studies have examined the relative productivity of
men and women in farming in sub-Saharan Africa. Often, but
not always, findings indicate that women farmers have lower
productivity for reasons of poor access to resources. Figure 21
also reflects the weaker productivity of women farmers: the
average production per farmer12 tends to be lower in countries
in which women represent the larger share of agricultural labour
force than men.

Female
productivity in
agriculture is
lower than that
of men.

Although women are less productive in farming, the general consensus is that they
are no less efficient than men in their use of resources.13 Rather, a lack of
complementary inputs leads to a lower labour productivity for female farmers.
Evidence from Burkina Faso shows that, compared to males from the same
household, female cultivators of the same crops in the same year achieved yields 30
percent below average.14 One reason for this differential was the lower level of male
and child labour used on plots controlled by women. Additionally, virtually all
fertilizer was concentrated on male-controlled plots. It was estimated that a
reallocation of the variable factors of production from male- to female-controlled
plots in the same household would raise household output by between 10 and 20
percent. An important conclusion of the findings was that households generally do
not act as a single individual and that appropriate modelling of the complexity of the
household decision-making process is needed in order to provide better policy
guidance.

For a sample of Kenyan farmers, it was found that the gross

value of output per hectare from male-managed plots was 8
percent above that of female-managed plots.15 It was estimated
that if women were to use the same resources as men their
productivity would increase by about 22 percent. The study also
concluded that educating women is more likely to increase the
use of new technologies than educating men.

Lower female
productivity
seems to derive
from unequal
access to
resources and
education.

Other research in Kenya indicates that increasing women's levels

of physical and human capital (to that of men's in the sample) would increase yields
by between 7 and 9 percent.16 The impact of schooling on farm output was also
found to be greater for women than for men because men with more schooling tend
to seek off-farm employment and are more likely to be successful in finding and
keeping a job. Women, on the other hand, are seldom able to find off-farm work.
Many factors explain the weakness of women's productivity in agriculture. Women
farmers have quantitatively and qualitatively less access to information, technology,
land, inputs and credit. Policy-makers, managers, agents and participants in
agricultural support services are generally males, who are not always sufficiently
aware of the specific problems and needs of women farmers. As a result, information
and extension services are typically geared towards male farmers, on the assumption
that the message will trickle across to women. Evidence shows that, in reality, this is
not the case.
In sub-Saharan Africa women are particularly disadvantaged
compared with men because they farm smaller plots of land with
more uncertain tenure.17 Women's access to land is limited by
legal and institutional factors such as legal discriminations
against their ownership and inheritance of land. Although
legislative changes now permit women to own property, in many
countries in the region traditions and customs continue to prevent women from
having effective ownership.
Women's
access to land
is a particular
problem.

In Wadi Kutum, the Sudan, for example, a titling scheme registered most of the land
owned by women in men's names, but women did not even protest because,
customarily, they do not conduct relations with the state, which has long been
considered as men's domain.18 Without secure title to land, women are often denied
membership of cooperatives and other rural organizations. Lack of ownership title
also means a lack of collateral and hence access to credit. Many developing countries
have legally affirmed women's basic right to own land but actual female control of
land is rarely observed.
Women typically receive less than 10 percent of the credit awarded to smallholders
and only 1 percent of the total amount of credit directed to agriculture in Kenya,
Malawi, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Zimbabwe.19 In sub-Saharan Africa, more women
than men are too poor to buy inputs such as fertilizer, and they are not generally
considered as creditworthy by classical financial institutions.
Training and extension services, and in particular the use of female field extension
workers, have been identified as a potentially important factor in raising female
productivity.20 However, in a glaring example of "gender blindness", only 7 percent

of agricultural extension services in Africa were directed to women farmers in 1988

and only about 11 percent of all extension personnel were women.21
Conclusion and policy implications
Women's labour productivity appears to be lower than men's in sub-Saharan Africa.
This does not mean that women's potential productivity is low, nor that women's role
in agriculture can be neglected. On the contrary, evidence shows that the apparent
low productivity of women is a result of the social and economic constraints they
face.
To improve women farmers' productivity in the region, much change is required.
Less discriminatory laws and policies must replace legislation and customs that
constrain women's access to factors of production such as land, credit, inputs,
information and technology. The interventions must be situation-specific. Actions
must be technically relevant and be suited to the sociocultural and religious precepts
of the farming community and the resources of the community.
Yet no quick solutions are likely to guarantee remarkable results, because the
success of many of the required remedies depends on changes in attitude on the part
of women themselves. Finding ways to increase women farmers' awareness of the
gender-related inequities they face and the resulting inefficiencies and to give
greater empowerment to women in their public choices are some of the most
important challenges currently faced by agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.
NOTES
7 FAO. 1994. Women, agriculture and rural development, a synthesis report
of the Africa region. Rome.
8 FAO. 1998. Rural women and food security: current situation and
perspectives. Rome.
9 K.A. Saito, H. Mekonnen and D. Spurling. 1994. Raising productivity of
women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank Discussion Paper 230.
Washington, DC.
10 Op. cit., note 8.
11 Op. cit., note 9; and F. Orivel, 1995. Education primaire et croissance
conomique en Afrique sub-Saharienne: les conditions d'une relation efficace.
Revue d'conomie du Dveloppement, 1.
12 Specifically, per economically active person in agriculture.
13 C. Udry, J. Hoddinott, H. Alderman and L. Haddad.1995. Gender
differentials in farm productivity: implications for household efficiency and
agricultural policy. Food Policy, 20(5): 407-423; C. Udry. 1996. Gender,
agricultural production, and the theory of the household. Journal of Political
Economy, 104(5): 1010-1046; P. Moock. 1976. The efficiency of women as

farm managers: Kenya. American Journal of Agricultural Economics:

Proceedings Issue, 58(5): 831-835; and op. cit., note 9.
14 C. Udry, J. Hoddinott, H. Alderman and L. Haddad. 1995. Gender
differentials in farm productivity: implications for household efficiency and
agricultural policy. Food Policy, 20(5): 407-423; and C. Udry. 1996. Gender,
agricultural production, and the theory of the household. Journal of Political
Economy, 104(5): 1010-1046.
15 Op. cit., note 9.
16 P. Moock. 1976. The efficiency of women as farm managers: Kenya.
American Journal of Agricultural Economics: Proceedings Issue, 58(5): 831835.
17 Op. cit., note 9.
18 M. Rekha. 1995. Women, land and sustainable development: barriers to
women's access to land. Washington, DC, International Centre for Research
on Women Reports and Publications.
19 Op. cit., note 8.
20 A.R. Quisumbing. 1996. Male-female differences in agricultural
productivity: methodological issues and empirical evidence. World
Development, 24(10): 1579-1595.
21 FAO. 1989. Report on the Global Consultation on Agricultural Extension.
Rome.

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[Accessed 26 August 2007]