Adeola Azeez, founder of Adeola Azeez Community Care Foundation (AACCF), empowered over 150 women in agritech on financial inclusion in a two-day Agritech Empowerment Training Programme in Ogun.
Azeez said her focus this year is to empower women farmers through training on various technologies that they could deploy to improve their socio-economic fortunes in agriculture and boost food production.
“The training was put together to commemorate this year’s International Women’s Day and to celebrate our women’s efforts in promoting a better society through agriculture and food production; to empower the women in agriculture through the transformative power of technology; to provide training and education to promote the efficiency and productivity of women in agribusiness,” she said.
Read also: Isidore Agritech unveils Jinja app to improve farmers’ market access
Azeez added by addressing all stakeholders and the government to set up interventions that address the concerns and needs of women in agriculture such as access to funding, access to land, access to machinery, access to agricultural inputs such as fertilisers, and feeds, and access to global and local markets.
Bamidele Abiodun, First Lady of Ogun State, said about 70 percent of Nigerian women who are farmers need financial support and improvement on investment because they are still very poor and have no access to funding, unlike their male counterparts.
“Such conscious and deliberate efforts from both the governments and other stakeholders would go a long way in achieving Sustainable Development Goals of eradicating poverty, and boosting food production while also achieving zero hunger,” she said.
According to Abiodun, women play a major role in most value chains, the financial gains of women in these sectors are still lesser than men and that’s because women make up a larger percentage of the labor force in agriculture.
She said although studies show that investment in women in agriculture get higher success, impact, and repayment rate when given a loan; they are less likely to be the ones paid for production, especially amongst smallholder farmers, and get less access to finance.
“These are all in addition to the fact that investments in women are also more likely to be paid forward to other women as we see today with the support of Adeola Azeez.
