This piece originally appeared on the Devex Future of Food Systems website. Click here to read the full piece.
Africa’s agriculture sector faces long-standing obstacles and opportunities. Many challenges — related to climate change and drought; pests and disease, such as the recent locust infestation in East Africa; gender gaps in access to land, as well as agricultural inputs and extension; and trade — affect farm productivity and nutrition security in intersecting and overlapping ways.
Addressing these obstacles is critical, given the role that agriculture plays in so many livelihoods, and COVID-19’s impacts on economic welfare make finding solutions more urgent.
The IGNITE project designed a set of tools to help organizations integrate gender- and nutrition-sensitive approaches into their ways of doing business. These include a diagnostic tool for gender and nutrition capacity, a training tool for the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and a guidance tool for nutrition strategy.
While many institutions implement agriculture, gender, and nutrition projects to address these issues, project-level change may not be enough to promote long-term transformation of the sector. Institutions must also incorporate nutrition and gender considerations into internal policies and business practices for deep and broad sectorwide transformation. Click here to read more on the Devex Future of Food website.
