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    Kenya women farm­ers neg­lected des­pite driv­ing ag­ri­cul­ture

     Kenya-women-farmersKenyan women make 80 per­cent of all farm­ers in the coun­try ac­cord­ing to the World Bank yet chal­lenges like own­er­ship of land and ac­cess to fin­ances means that they never get to enjoy the fruits of their la­bour.

    Flanked by a poultry yard and sev­eral cows graz­ing just a few meters from her home, Linda Okal is busy in her ve­get­able garden in Kenya's cent­ral Mbeere province - fam­ous for its ag­ri­cul­tural products.

    Okal grows maize and cul­tiv­ates fruit trees, rears dairy cows and nu­mer­ous chick­ens. She also takes care of her two chil­dren. "I star­ted farm­ing when my hus­band moved to town to look for a white col­lar job," Linda says. She was left be­hind to take care of the farm and the chil­dren - an in­creas­ingly com­mon tale in Kenya, where more and more women take over farms.

    Women tra­di­tion­ally used to stay at home to take care of the fam­ily and cook for the men on the farm, Okal said. "But there were no fe­male farm­ers."

    Now, more than 80 per­cent of Kenya's farms are run by women. Only half of these women ac­tu­ally own their farms; the oth­ers work the land that be­longs to their hus­bands. But not hav­ing own­er­ship cre­ates a lot of prob­lems. Since the women don't own the land, they can­not join farm­ing co­oper­at­ives that would help them in­ter­act with other people who could help them im­prove pro­duc­tion or sales.

    They also can­not get loans from the bank to buy new equip­ment or hire help, Okal said. "Most of the farms be­long to the hus­bands, who own the title deeds. A bank can­not give you a loan if you don't have your own deed," she says. Con­sequently, the women are re­duced to small-scale farm­ing.

    Without the "priv­ilege of get­ting the loans that would help them fin­ance their farms for bet­ter pro­ductiv­ity and main­ten­ance," says Wob­woba Ki­protich, of the Kenyan Min­istry of Ag­ri­cul­ture, the women are "not fin­an­cially stable."

    In 2010, Kenya draf­ted a new con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tee­ing equal rights for women: they can now in­herit prop­erty and own land. But in Kenya's rural areas, many people are un­aware of the new con­sti­tu­tion. En­tire com­munit­ies live under the old sys­tem that puts women and girls at a dis­ad­vant­age, par­tic­u­larly con­cern­ing prop­erty rights. Own­ing land gives women ac­cess to cap­ital and the free­dom to leave ab­us­ive mar­riages.

    Ki­protich is con­vinced that sup­port­ing women farm­ers will "im­prove the in­fra­struc­ture and re­duce trade bar­ri­ers and urban mi­gra­tion of those in search of em­ploy­ment and bet­ter stand­ards of liv­ing." Many fe­male farm­ers will be en­cour­aged to farm, which in turn would en­sure food se­cur­ity in the coun­try, he ob­served.

    Ac­cord­ing to the United Na­tions' Food and Ag­ri­cul­ture Or­gan­iz­a­tion, Kenyan farms man­aged by men are eight per­cent more pro­duct­ive than farms run by women - but the num­bers are mis­lead­ing. The women have fewer re­sources, fewer ma­chines and out­dated ir­rig­a­tion sys­tems. In fact, the UN says that if they had credit and were able to in­vest in new equip­ment, the farms run by women would be the most pro­duct­ive in Kenyan his­tory.

    The gov­ern­ment is ready to make that hap­pen, Ki­protich says and points out that Kenya is build­ing roads to fa­cil­it­ate trans­port for the farm products, and dams for ir­rig­a­tion and pro­du­cing elec­tri­city. "We are edu­cat­ing women in the use of mod­ern tech­no­logy and try­ing to provide them with a read­ily avail­able mar­ket for their products," he says.

    Gov­ern­ment sup­port is chan­ging the lives of farm­ers like Linda Okal, who is plan­ning to take own­er­ship of her farm. "I doubt my hus­band will re­fuse be­cause I have de­veloped this place so much and it's like I ac­tu­ally own it," she ar­gues, adding that she is not plan­ning to ever leave her land.

    "My hope for the fu­ture is that our rural areas are de­veloped so people don't have to leave for work in the city," Linda says. "I would love to see women's rights guar­an­teed as was done by the new con­sti­tu­tion."

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