The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, has lamented that women earn only 30 percent of total agricultural output, despite their contributions to the value chain in Nigeria.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim made the statement while speaking in Abuja on Wednesday, at the National Workshop on Agro-value chain capacity building organised by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs in collaboration with the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
The Women Minister noted that women represented a larger percentage of the agricultural workforce, and contributed more to output but earned considerably lower, emphasising that despite women’s contributions to the nation’s food systems and economic productivity, they remained excluded from agricultural financing, due to gender imbalance applied to policy and investment opportunities.
“70% of our agricultural workforce are female. 80% of our total agro-output is produced by women. And yet, this immense contribution has not been fully rewarded.
“Women earn 30% less for the same work. Only 10% of us own farmland. And only a shocking 10% of us have access to agricultural financing.
“This exclusion is not always deliberate, but it is real. Systemic barriers arise when a gender lens is not applied to policy and investment,” she stated.
Sulaiman-Ibrahim noted that through the Women Agro Value Expansion Initiative, the Tinubu-led administration will empower 10 million women across the agricultural value chain to become productive, competitive, and successful entrepreneurs.
While calling for stakeholders’ contributions to achieve the aim, the minister urged participants at the workshop to make best use of the opportunities, adding that President Bola Tinubu is committed to creating the enabling policies and support systems needed to make Nigeria greater.
The National Programme Manager, WAVE, Abdullah Mohammed, on his part, disclosed that the program sought to empower women in agriculture with economically viable initiatives while ensuring that they move from peasant farmers into becoming billionaires.
Mohammed explained that the program targeted 10 million women within the next 5 years, while injecting N10 trillion naira into their hands, to translate the sum into over N40 trillion Naira annually.
“This project is designed to inject N10trn into the hands of women, and also to see that this N10trn translates into over N40trn annually.
“We design it in such a way that there is a partnership between the federal government, under the Ministry of Women Affairs, and other private sectors, like SMK Farms, Hafaz Farms, and Easy Sales Export, in collaboration to see that we move these women,” he added.
He explained that, unlike previous programs, and to ensure sustainability, beneficiaries will be provided with toolkits according to their agricultural focus, and they will also work with the WAVE team to ensure monitoring and effective delivery.
“There are start-up kits depending on the geopolitical area of the project. Some are going into grain farming, some are into fisheries, some will be in poultry, some will be in livestock, so depending on the geopolitical area, we were going to determine what will be productive in that area.
“But whatever region they’re coming from, the start-up kit for that project is being provided there. At every cycle of production, there will be a reinvestment into the project.
“Every beneficiary that is going to participate or happen to be a part of this program will be carried along for the next five years until they become the billionaires that the government designed them to be, not just only that, the essence is to inject the culture of agriculture into the veins of every Nigerian woman and every family,” Mohammed stated.