Seeds of hope for working women in rural areas
In Nganda, a rural community in remote Senegal close to the Gambian border, restaurant owner Aissatou Tisse is carving out a reputation for tasty homemade, locally grown food.
About 100km away in the village of Niakhar, handicapped Daba Dione feeds her family by raising chickens on a modest smallholding. Thanks to a training course in veterinary health, she is routinely consulted by neighbors about their own poultry. “Today, I’ve even forgotten the difficulties of the past,” Dione told AFP.
The two have benefited from schemes that seek both to support women’s empowerment and fight poverty in rural Africa, where male dominance, backbreaking labor and misery go hand in hand.
UN agencies like International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), both based in Rome, manage projects to help empower rural women, who account for at least 43% of agricultural laborers worldwide, according to an FAO report.
Why women? Women are more inclined than men to spend their revenue on food and education.
[Read full AFP article]
This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation by Grant Montgomery.