Publication: Top Policy Lessons in Agriculture
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2024-04-22
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2024-04-22
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In Africa, agriculture is vital for employment and food security. Despite women contributing 40 percent of agricultural labor, they face barriers leading to significant gender gaps in productivity. Closing these gaps could unlock substantial economic gains, potentially boosting Nigeria's GDP by up to US$8.1 billion. Factors hindering female farmers include caregiving responsibilities, limited access to resources, and social norms. Impact evaluation evidence from the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) points toward policy solutions that can address many of these constraints and help female farmers reach their full potential, ultimately contributing to the broader economic development of the continent.
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“World Bank. 2024. Top Policy Lessons in Agriculture. Gender Innovation Lab; April 2024. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41449 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Growth and Productivity in Agriculture and Agribusiness : Evaluative Lessons from World Bank Group Experience(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011)The World Bank Group has a unique opportunity to match the increases in financing for agriculture with a sharper focus on improving agricultural growth and productivity in agriculture-based economies, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa. Greater effort will be needed to connect sectoral interventions and achieve synergies from public and private sector interventions; to build capacity and knowledge exchange; to take stock of experience in rain-fed agriculture; to ensure attention to financial sustainability and to cross-cutting issues of gender, environmental, and social impacts and climate; and to better integrate the World Bank Group support at the global and regional levels with that at the country level. 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The gender gap in agricultural productivity—measured by the value of agricultural produce per unit of cultivated land—ranges from 4 to 25 percent, depending on the country and the crop (World Bank and ONE 2014). This gap exists because women frequently have unequal access to key agricultural inputs such as land, labor, knowledge, fertilizer, and improved seeds. This report estimates the monetary value of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda.Publication Top Policy Lessons in Agriculture(Washington, DC, 2022-09)Across Africa, agriculture is a primary sector of employment, and African women provide about 40 percent of the agricultural labor across the continent. Yet women farmers face systemic barriers to success, leading to large gender gaps in agricultural productivity that range from 23 percent in Tanzania to 66 percent in Niger. These gender gaps not only represent major untapped economic potential but could also yield sizable gains for African economies if they were closed. For instance, in Nigeria, closing the gender productivity gap in agriculture could boost gross domestic product by an estimated US2.3 billion dollars and potentially as much as US8.1 billion dollars due to spillovers to other economic sectors. Several factors driving female farmers’ lower productivity are the time and bandwidth taxes from care and household responsibilities, limited access to and control of hired labor and other productive inputs, skills and information gaps, low financial liquidity, and restrictive social norms. Over 90 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s extreme poor, who are some of the most vulnerable to shocks, are engaged in agriculture. In the face of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and global price shocks, that can exacerbate food insecurity, women farmers need targeted support and access to productive inputs that can secure their livelihoods and mitigate existing gender inequalities. Impact evaluation evidence from the Africa Gender Innovation Lab points toward policy solutions that can address many of these constraints and help women farmers reach their full potential.Publication GIL Top Policy Lessons on Increasing Women’s Youth Employment(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01)Young women in Africa are less likely to be employed than young men, as a result of gaps in access to resources such as skills, time, and capital, and due to underlying social norms. Adolescence is a particularly critical time to intervene, as teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school can have severe impacts on future employment and earnings with significant consequences on their lives. 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