NGOs Train Women Farmers In FCT On Use Of Technology, Innovation

Women farmers in Jiwa community, a settlement in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja have benefited from a training on how to leverage technology and innovation in the digital space to improve their agricultural businesses.

The training which took place Thursday, March 6 at Women Centre, Jiwa was organised by a coalition of NGOs; Centre For Accountability & Inclusive Development (CAAID), Development Initiative For Community Enhancement (DICE), Senema Productions; INCLUD; Small Women Farmers’ Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON).

With the theme; “Embrace Equity Community Dialogue; Gender-Friendly Agricultural Innovations and Technology,” the community dialogue was aimed at facilitating discussion and exploring ways to deepen gender-friendly innovations and technology in the agricultural ecosystem for female farmers.

Executive Director, DICE, Bosede Akinbolusere while speaking said the world is moving, and those not technologically inclined and relevant will be left behind.

She said the 2023 International Women’s Day theme is very inclusive, and all women should be carried along.

“In Africa and most developing world women are over-represented in farming, in agriculture. If these people that are there on the farm are left behind, there will be problems of food security in the future. That is why decided to bring this dialogue to their doorstep to have a conversation with them, to see how we can be better farmers, and be technologically relevant in their agricultural business.

Akinbolusere called on both public, private sector and civil society organisations to find where they can carve a niche for themselves to contribute towards empowering women to be digitally relevant.

Also speaking, Executive Director, Senema Productions Limited, Senami Ohiomokhare said some of the conversations point to the fact that no one can leave outside of technology anymore, as no one can do without technology in this 21st century.

“Needless to say, even at the level of these women, they can take pictures of their products when they harvest and share them with people. They can be taught how to use these things. With a smartphone, if you have animals you can even do an ultra-scan to know if the baby inside the animals is living well. You can use a smartphone to do irrigation on your farm to check where you can spread water across your farm. I believe with what they are taught, they will be able to replicate and improve on what they do.

She said the meeting is a fact-finding mission to know what challenges the women are facing and proffer solutions to some of the problems.

“Now that we done that, there is a call to action. The call to action is for us to go back, and say these are the problems they have highlighted, these are the solutions we have found to these problems.”

“To implement these solutions to help these women, we need partners, we need the banks for them to acquire a bank account. We will use what we have to call more partners like banks, network providers, and those in the tech space to help these women grow their businesses.”

SWOFON Financial Secretary, Zainab Mohammed in her address thanked the facilitators for the meeting, describing it as impactful.

“I’ve learnt a lot and I look forward to learning more. The reason why they came to my community is because of SWOFON. SWOFON is under Action AID Nigeria, and we are in 36 states of the federation.

Mohammed who is a farmer in rice, beans and soya beans said the dialogue has provided more awareness for the women farmers. “We have been enlightened on how to apply technology to grow our businesses, which will have a lasting impact and help us improve on our businesses.”

The event was organised in commemoration of the 2023 International Women’s Day with the objective of deepening understanding of the various inequity and inequality practices experienced by female farmers.

It was also aimed at leveraging the media in disseminating strategies that would promote equitable and women-friendly innovations, and also create a diverse platform for farmers to discuss and fashion ways to embrace an equitable agricultural ecosystem.

At the end of the event, the participants numbering about thirty, were advised to own a smartphone and a bank account in order to be compliant with the cashless policy of the government and to be digitally inclined.