The women making Africa’s food systems more resilient
Eda Aydin, Senior Analyst, Climate Policy Initiative
Agribusinesses like Amaati and AlltimeFresh are innovating ways to centre women and climate in their models, for economic, environmental, and social benefit. (Photo credit: depositphotos.com/ bennymarty)
Over a third of working women worldwide are employed in agriculture and food systems, playing a critical role in global food security. Despite this, female farmers receive less than 10% of agricultural loans, a persistent barrier to gender equality in agrifood systems. This is compounded in smallholder communities with patrilineal inheritance structures that can prevent women from owning land, therefore, lacking the security and decision-making power that comes with ownership.
“Men have the luxury to move from one fertile land to another. Women are left and either given land that is not fertile or no land at all,” says Salma Abdulai, Co-Founder of Amaati.
Amaati is one of the twelve women-owned or led agribusinesses supported by the Agrifood Investment ‘Connector’ programme of the ClimateShot Investor Coalition (CLIC). Connector is a technical assistance programme providing investment facilitation and impact assessment support to agribusinesses in emerging markets and developing economies.
Climate change is exacerbating the situation. Droughts, floods, and heatwaves are growing in intensity, pummelling farm yields and incomes worldwide. As the outmigration of men to urban areas in search of alternative employment becomes more common, especially in areas with degraded lands, this leaves women to fill the gap, despite having less access to agricultural land, financing, services, and technology.
“Women farmers form the backbone of Nigeria’s agricultural sector, yet they are still expected to farm without the tools, inputs, or support systems that men can access,” shares Eneotse Isosie Unoogwu, Founder and CEO of AlltimeFresh, also supported by the Connector. As a result, women are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of climate shocks and the economic losses they trigger.
With women comprising over half the agricultural workforce in major agrarian economies in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, closing the gender credit gap is critical for sustainable economic development and climate-resilient food systems. Agribusinesses like Amaati and AlltimeFresh are innovating ways to center women and climate in their models, for economic, environmental, and social benefit.
“We integrate a gender lens into our selection because it makes for better, more stable businesses, and acts as a force multiplier for climate resilience,” says Wen E Chin, Manager of the Connector.
A crop for women
Fonio is the ideal low-maintenance, low-cost crop: it doesn’t require fertilisers or pesticides, and it is both drought- and flood-tolerant. (Photo credit: Amaati Company Limited)
Amaati facilitates women’s access to marginal lands to grow fonio, a climate-adaptive and nutrient-dense grain indigenous to the West African savannah. The idea to cultivate fonio came to Salma during her Masters in Agricultural Economics, when a lecturer spoke about farmers growing fonio in mountainous and rocky regions in Guinea. It occurred to Salma that fonio should increasingly be utilised in Ghana, where abandoned lands are abundant in the North.
Since then, Amaati has trained and provided seed financing and mechanisation services to over 11,000 female farmers. Fonio is the ideal low-maintenance, low-cost crop: it doesn’t require fertilisers or pesticides, and is both drought- and flood-tolerant. The appeal was clear to Salma.
“We don’t need a crop that will add another burden on women. Climate-friendly crops would at least help reduce the pressure that already comes with farming,” she explains.
The crop’s climate resilience was critical for adoption, because as droughts become more common, water-intensive crops can fail and lead to increased debt burdens. Amaati offtakes the grain to be processed into flour, cereal, or bran, for export and domestic markets.
A fresh take
Alltimefresh operates six solar-powered cold storage facilities near local farmers' markets. From these facilities, the company supplies fresh produce to over 3,000 female traders operating in Nigeria’s traditional, open-air markets. (Photo credit: depositphotos.com /miroslav_1)
Using a unique collective model, Alltimefresh brings female farmers in Nigeria onto shared “block farms,” large tracts of land combined to eliminate their physical boundaries. This increases economies of scale for women who are otherwise engaged in small-scale vegetable farming or other low-income, informal activities. Each block farm has a local female community worker trained by Alltimefresh in climate-smart agronomy. The community worker, in turn, supports farmers in implementing practices such as using drought-resistant seeds, bio-inputs, and solar irrigation, which has resulted in 100% on-farm adoption. As a result of these enhanced practices, Eneotse is seeing yields that are five times the average.
The climate impacts don't stop on the farm. Further downstream, the company operates six solar-powered cold storage facilities near local farmers' markets. From these facilities, the company supplies fresh produce to over 3,000 female traders operating in the traditional, open-air markets, where 72% of Nigeria’s agricultural produce is sold. Preserving farm harvests is critical to Nigeria’s food security and climate mitigation, where approximately 50% of fresh produce is lost due to heat spoilage resulting from inadequate storage and transportation.
Alltimefresh sells produce from its block farms to female traders on short-term credit, allowing them to align payments with their sales cycles.
Looking through a new lens
When asked about the returns on investing in women, Salma shares that Amaati benefits from a motivated workforce that delivers consistent, high-quality fonio.
“Most women use [their profits] to pay their children’s school fees, so they call us ahead of time to ensure their fonio is collected promptly,” she says, resulting in reliable, scalable supply for her company. As part of its efforts to strengthen community resilience, Amaati provides health insurance to its employees and has helped establish a Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA).
The experiences of these agribusinesses align with evidence from investors which corroborates the value of dual lens investing or applying two different perspectives of gender and climate into agrifood investment decisions. CLIC member Root Capital, which has invested in over 120 gender-inclusive and women-led agribusinesses, analysed ten years of data evaluating USD 1 billion of their loans in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The findings were clear: businesses with higher levels of women's leadership or participation had more stable revenues, grew faster, and defaulted less frequently on their loans. They were also more likely to acquire new sources of financing and yielded dramatically higher profits on their loans.
Leonor Gutiérrez, Director of the Women in Agriculture Initiative (WAI) at Root Capital, suggests applying the dual lens by segregating client data performance by gender, so that trends are easily visible. For instance, the 2X Climate Finance Taskforce finds that enabling women to access resources to the same extent as men can increase on-farm yields by 20 to 30 per cent, leading to better business outcomes for companies and investors. For agribusinesses, Leonor’s advice is to “search for other women involved in the agribusiness to elevate their leadership, who will show up in trainings and conversations.” This both prevents the burden of representation from falling on one woman and means that a new generation of women is trained in leading the way forward in inclusive, climate-positive agribusinesses.
Most importantly, Leonor adds, gender equity must “not [be] a side project,” a sentiment underscored by Eneotse.
“You can’t just walk into any community and say you want to empower women,” she explains. She spends time first engaging community leaders, conducting house visits, and speaking with the husbands of female farmers to secure their support. This has made her work more effective and enabled women to achieve economic freedom and financial agency in situations where they were previously dependent on men’s allowances.
She concludes, “Women take what they do seriously. When they are given the opportunity, they maximise it.”
