Restrictive social norms, lack of access to resources and the mobile gender gap all make it challenging for women to participate in agricultural value chains and embrace the digital agriculture solutions that can connect them to markets and services and strengthen their decision-making power.
Gender-inclusive approaches that purposely consider women as well as men help address barriers related to access, knowledge and skills, among others, are crucial. The objective of this document is to examine the limited participation of women in digitised agricultural value chains by identifying the main barriers for women in D4Ag initiatives and shedding light on best practices to increase women’s participation and empowerment in these value chains.
In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the digitisation of agricultural value chains is enabling access to markets, assets and services for smallholder farmers. Digital agriculture (D4Ag) solutions, such as digital payments and digital procurement, create efficiencies for both agribusinesses and farmers in the last mile. Digital procurement solutions can generate a range of records, including farmers’ production data that enable the creation of economic identities and help them access finance. Digital procurement solutions can also be bundled with digital advisory services that provide farmers with vital information on new farming techniques, weather forecasts and crop production.
Yet, women farmers are being left behind. Although they represent 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force, women face social and structural barriers that typically relegate them to traditional, low-value and labour-intensive activities, such as plowing, sowing and harvesting.
The GSMA AgriTech programme supports the digitisation of the agricultural last mile through the GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains. The fund supports seven D4Ag providers to scale up digital solutions for the agricultural last mile through four main use cases: digital profiles, track and trace and farm management systems, information services and digital financial services. However, in all the last-mile digitisation projects currently implemented by the GSMA and our partners, less than a quarter of D4Ag registered farmers are women.
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