Thanks to Youthlead whose aim to recruit young and transformative changemakes who have interest and have done great works and contributions towards the solution of some gabs within our various communities and the world as whole. It is a platform for changemakes to gain skills, build their capacity through mentorship programs and the opportunity to know and access other good resources that you never knew it existed in our various communities. The global hub for young changemakers to maximize your your impact through networking, mentoring, and accessing information.
Firstly, the session i will like to elaborate is on digital solutions catalyzing women's agricbusinesses thus the session's objective was to inform women smallholders and woman in agribusiness about available digital platforms that are valuable to them. To achieve the need of growing digital there is the need to have a platform where other digital players get the opportunity to demonstrate value of their solutions to women and identity opportunities for scaling up. This section was held at OTI ( Tent 2) on 5th September 2019.
It is imperative that young women not be underrepresented within agriculture. Due to the fact that women lack access to agricultural technologies, women's lower capital and insecure land rights. Encouraging adoption of new technologies by women farmers and providing knowledge on these technologies and bring it to their doorsteps were the complimentary policies if implement will help maximize digitalisation among women farmers.The right resources could help rural women maximize economic opportunities, increase productivity, and improve food security, education and healthcare, since women tend to reinvest in their households.
Keynotes from the panelists discussion point to one direction which i can relate to what was said by Anna UN Women : closing the gender gap in farming would not only fight hunger, but also provide "positive secondary effects". Women are less likely to own large farm animals, leaving them with smaller livestock and small-scale dairy projects.Women have less access to education, especially in rural areas. They estimate that improving women's access to these resources would enable women to increase yields on their own farms by 20- 30%, which would increase Agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5- 4% and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12- 17%.
It came to my realisation that in Kenya, women and men have been trained on new agricultural technologies and agri-business development. The majority of women reported an earnings increase of 35% from their agriculture activities so there is the need to grow digital.They also demonstrated the availablity of tool and technologies to smallholder women farmers which make farming easier and to earn a lot of benefits from it as well.
Key speakers were Hon. Higino Francisco de Marrule Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Mozambique, Ms. Fatou Aminata Lo,. Rwanda Country Representative, UN Women, Ms. Alima Bawah, Co-Founder, COO. CowTribe and others.