Being a paper delivered at the 1st AWOTIB symposium
By Janet Cole-Ajayi
Today the October 16th is World Food Day. Sadly, millions of working people in Nigeria today are living in extreme hunger! Credible statistics, especially from OXFAM says that over a hundred million Nigerians are living below the poverty level; meaning that they live below ₦600 ($2) per day. This is very alarming and justifies those who have been calling for a proper overhauling of the hostile economy and politics prevalent today.
World Food Day is a time when people around the world declare their commitment to eradicating hunger. It was inaugurated in 1979, to tell the whole of humanity that everyone in the globe should never live in hunger. And to make food so available to all and sundry, agriculture is the key.
Agriculture is the art and science of cultivating the soil, growing crops and raising livestock. The world is concerned about the global hunger and poverty. Social protection thus became an important programme organized, to reduce poverty and manage socio-economic risks such as unemployment, sickness,disability and old age.
Social protection can be effective and sustainable, if there is inclusive economic growth. This is where women ought to play an important role in managing natural resources both at family and community levels.
Report shows that in communities around the world, women produce 70 – 80 percent of agricultural growth, yet they are prevented from inheriting properties acquired by their male counterparts in the course of cohabiting. For instance, in some communities men marry more than one wife, as they experience agricultural growth. These wives are then expected to help out on the farms, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to make meaningful contribution to decision-making for societal development. In some part of eastern Nigeria, the female child is not entitled to any inheritance; it is a general belief that the male child alone has a right to properties, since he won’t be sold off in marriage, like the girl-child.
In the developing countries women are caregivers to not just children, but the elderly and sick too. The entire community is dependent on women!. All over the world women have tried to contribute to agricultural production. The average woman produces more than half of all the food that is grown. It is therefore important that the education of women and girls receive adequate attention, to enable them understand the difference between the environment and development.
WOMEN EDUCATION AND EMPOWERMENT AS PANACEAS TO HUNGER
Empowerment of women in human development and in relation to the protection of the environment must be recognized and sustained. Educated women are more likely to have fewer, healthier and better trained children who will survive into adulthood and ultimately contribute to economic growth. This does not mean that non-eduated women like artisans and others do not have survival means. In fact, most of them habitually survive through habitual trading. A great example is the Egun women in Lagos that deal majorly in fishing. We also have the Deltan women who handles the agricultural development while also not found wanting domestically.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN AN UNEQUAL WORLD
We live in an unjust world where the rights of women are violated with impunity. This consequently hold back women around the world, even as they experience unequal access to land, resources and properties. There is evidence from a number of studies conducted during the 1980’s that mothers typically spend their income on food and health care for children. Over millions of women worldwide find solace in acquiring small loans, microfinance and other financial services for their petty businesses, because they do not have access to the formal banking system. Cheering though, is that over the years, microfinance programs have succeeded in increasing the incomes of poor household, thereby protecting their families. Women who now own or have access to land can use the land to produce food for general income or as collateral for credit or loan facility from the microfinance banks. More can still be done by way of intervention from several organisations like AWOTIB.
Over the years there have been many efforts to reduce poverty among African women. Investments have been introduced at different periods, to increase agricultural productivity, improve livestock management, and provide opportunities for sustainable livelihoods. However, when the society pays little or no attention to training the girl child, because of some myth that all efforts put into developing the female gender eventually ends in the kitchen, there is bound to be hardship and increased poverty in the land. There is an adage which says, “train a female, and you have trained a whole nation”. It behoves us, great women, to do all that’s within our reach in ensuring appropriate training of women and girls, if we must break poverty and hardship.
WAYS-FORWARD: WOMEN ARE THE SALT OF THE WORLD!
I will like to conclude by itemising a few things women can do to survive, as well as take leading roles in the building of our world. Such as can be useful and convenient for all.
First, is that women in Nigeria must stop feeling inferior to men. We must stop begging men to ascribe to us, roles to play in societal development. Especially in politics and the economy. We are actually the most fundamental in both sectors!
Women must continue to resist through our communal organizing and networking. We have great examples in Funmilayo Kuti, Fela’s mother who organized the Egba women against the colonial government. My own mother-in-law in Ondo state also led women in her family to break the wicked laws that women don’t get inheritances. These steps are actually going to be very difficult, but we have to do what we have to, for our everlasting freedom.
Finally, we must start standing up against government rules and principles that attack womanhood and help to keep on the poverty cycle. One of such is the current allocations to health and education in the 2019 budget by the Federal government. There is certainly no way that the ₦48billion allocated to education can allow for free and quality education at all levels and this makes women to be the eventual victims. It is a fact that costly education affects women than men. Also, with the over 200 women that die everyday as a result of child birth, the ₦46billion allocated to healthcare will only make more hospitals to degenerate and by so doing, increase the number of women dying every day.
Great women, let us all band together and fight for a world with abundant food for all; a world where women live in real comforts just as men!
Aluta Continua!
