The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and UN Women launched a five-year project, “Accelerating Progress Towards Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment”.
Funded by Norway and Sweden, the US$5 million project will benefit more than 8,000 rural women in Singida, Dodoma and Zanzibar by helping to secure their livelihoods, through resilience, in the agriculture sector.
In Tanzania, food is produced by smallholder farmers, with women accounting for the majority of the labour force and earning 80 percent of their income from subsistence farming.
Speaking at the launch, Suleiman Masoud Makame, Zanzibar’s Minister of Blue Economy and Fisheries, said, “Gender equality is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Tanzania recognises this and has adopted policies that advance gender equality. As a government we recognise and appreciate the continued partnership by the UN in Tanzania to support our efforts towards advancing gender equality especially in the agriculture sector. This joint programme by FAO, IFAD, WFP and UN Women demonstrates this continued support.”
The programme will build women’s capacity on climate-smart agriculture to respond to climate crisis challenges which disproportionately affect women due to their reduced access to agricultural resources, lack of decision-making authority and weak adaptation strategies.
The project in Tanzania is part of the second phase of a global programme also being implemented in Nepal, Niger, the Pacific Island and Tunisia. The first phase of the programme was launched in 2014 in Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Nepal, Niger and Rwanda.
