By East African Gazette
Kampala
Farmers in Uganda and other developing countries continue to encounter various challenges, and one of them is the limited access to markets for their produce.
This has always been attributed to several factors, with a main one being the substandard quality of their products.
Nevertheless, this primarily impacts women who hold the majority of power in the agricultural sector.
According to specialists, women hold a significant presence in the agricultural field, particularly as cultivators.
However, they are often excluded from engaging in value-added activities such as processing, producing biopesticides, manufacturing animal feeds, distributing seeds, and fertilizers.
Statistics indicate that six out of 10 women in Uganda are engaged in the agricultural sector, with nine out of 10 being involved in farming rather than value addition tasks such as processing.
This exclusion poses challenges for women in accessing external markets.
Dr. Paulina Chiwangu, the UN Women Country Women Representative in Uganda, emphasizes the significant advantages that Ugandan women engaged in agribusiness and other member states of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) can gain from strengthened networking and international collaboration.
She stated that the UN Women, in partnership with Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), arranged a sideline occasion called the “Source of the Nile Women in Agribusiness Expo and Investment Summit” at Serena Kigo Hotel-Kampala to enhance networking and foster partnerships among member states, ultimately expanding the market opportunities.
Speaking to journalists at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala, she stressed that the summit presents a valuable opportunity for Uganda to enhance international cooperation and trade in order to promote gender equality and empower women, majority of whom are in the agriculture sector.
The event provided a platform for 50 women involved in various agribusiness value chains to pitch various investment ideas with private sector investors, local companies from the banking, telecom, and other sectors, as well as multilateral partners and policy makers.
It was aimed at exploring ways to mitigate risks associated with agribusiness, such as expensive credit, adverse weather conditions, overreliance on sunlight for post-harvest protection, exploitation by intermediaries, the labor-intensive nature of manual land cultivation, and access to domestic, regional, and international markets.
“The primary objective of the agribusiness export and investments summit is to foster collaborations for subsequent investments in catalytic capital to support women’s involvement in value addition and agro-processing endeavors. Additionally, the summit aims to promote digital solutions that enhance the economic independence of women farmers, facilitate their inclusion in agricultural supply chains through memberships, and provide business advisory services to young women,” she added.
The Commissioner of Animal Health in MAAIF, Rose Okurut said the crucial factors that drive and support the advancement of women entrepreneurs include accessibility to markets and the provision of suitable technologies and innovations.
She emphasized the necessity for decisive measures at both the policy and investment levels during NAM and G77 summits in order to ensure that the endeavors in agribusiness result in a significant and extensive number of women emerging as successful and sustainable entrepreneurs.
She is convinced that the summit has the potential to make a substantial contribution towards closing this divide.
Okurut stressed that women’s economic participation and empowerment is top priority in an effort to increase the volume of agricultural exports from developing countries in primary and processed products, both, to other countries across the globe.
“Agro-industrialization has the potential to promote inclusive, resilient and equitable growth, employment for women and youth as well as boosting manufacturing to reduce trade deficits, if we get well prepared to maximize the available opportunities,” she added.
She pointed out that the global organic food organic food market grew from $259.06bn in 2022 to $294.54bn in 2023, because consumers are shifting their focus towards organic food products.
Data from the United Nations shows that in Africa, the most consumed food is cassava at 66.7kg per year, which is equivalent to 12 percent of all food consumed in Africa, followed by Wheat (58.8kg per person), maize (44.2kg per person), rice (34.3kg per person) and yam (33.5kg per person).
“These are crops mainly produced by women farmers across different agro-ecological zones in Uganda and Africa at large,” she added.
Okurut stressed that given the recent shifts in geo-political relations, domestic and regional food trade is the alternative to food imports and can offer localized supply chains in which women farmers can do farm processing, branding, and packaging, instead of selling raw materials that fetch less income.
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