For rural communities, land is crucial for providing families with housing, food, and security. Holding land is often associated with social status and higher income.

The government is working with the agricultural sector to support and manage address challenges that women face in the industry, agriculture, land reform and rural development minister Thoko Didiza said.

In 2020, the South African government approved a women empowerment policy proposing that roughly 50% of the allocation of agricultural farming land under the Redistribution Programme should be for women, 40% for youth, and 10% for people living with disabilities.

The World Bank recently released an interesting book titled Agriculture in Africa: Telling Myths from Facts. It covers a wide range of topics from smallholder land access, post-harvest losses, financing of agricultural inputs, agricultural labour productivity and women’s work in agriculture amongst others.

African women are often at the heart of communities dealing with huge changes related to economic development and shoulder the burden of environmental mismanagement.

Over 60% of all employed women in Sub-Saharan Africa work in agriculture.