Gender bias holds back Africa women agriculture researchers

In a tiny village near Kisumu city in Kenya, scientific researcher Mary Anyango Oyunga spends most of her time educating women about something they have always done — growing sweet potatoes.

But Oyunga’s message to the female farmers in Kisian village is new, even though it is based on her scientific research findings published in 2009 in the refereed African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development.

The research, which revealed that Orange Fleshed Sweet Potatoes (OFSP) were extremely rich in vitamin A, may have been in the scientific domain for a while but until recently the women in Kisian knew nothing about it.

For Oyunga this implementation of her research findings is just as important as conducting the research was: “Conducting a study is one important step. But making it real by using the findings as a tool to improve livelihoods of people on the ground is what makes it complete.”

And how to go about doing this is one of the skills she acquired after winning a fellowship with the African Women in Agriculture Research and Development (AWARD)programme.

The programme brings together African female agricultural research scientists based on intellectual merit from 20 different agricultural science disciplines.

“Scientists are on the cutting edge of solving Africa’s food crisis. But we need to urgently address the gender gap in our scientific community. We need more women pursuing careers in agricultural science. Because women are the face of African farming,” said Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the vice-president of Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa.

Oyunga is just one of the 180 top ranking female agricultural research scientists who have been awarded fellowships under the AWARD programme, and who is already putting into practice what she learnt.

In Kisian it is considered a disgrace if a woman does not have some vines of sweet potatoes growing on her farm.

The potatoes are highly treasured in this part of the world.

They are grown all year round and supplement sometimes meagre diets.

Oyunga, who works at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), is busy communicating her research findings to women smallholder farmers here.

Particular types of sweet potatoes have an important nutritional value that is crucial especially to young children, she tells them.

These findings could save some of the 43 million children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa who are at risk of Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD).

According to the World Health Organisation, VAD is responsible for most cases of impaired blindness in children and significantly increases the risk of severe illness, and even death, from such common childhood infections as diarrhoeal disease and measles.